First Grave on the Right

edge. I should have turned tail then, but she was so desperate and so scared and so tired of her husband taking out the fact that he was a certifiable loser on her that I couldn’t turn her down. My jaw doesn’t compare to the horrific shiner she was sporting the first time I met her. She knew, and I believed it, too, that if she’d tried to leave her husband without help, she would never have seen another birthday.

Since she was originally from Mexico and had relatives there, we cooked up a plan for her to meet her aunt in Mexico City. The two of them would then travel south with a deed and just enough cash to open a small inn, or posada, on a beach not far from her grandparents’ village.

From what Rosie told me, her husband had never met any of her relatives from Mexico. The chances of him finding the right Gutierrez family in Mexico City were slim to none. But just in case, we had new identities drawn up for them both. An adventure in itself.

In the meantime, I sent an anonymous text to Mr. Herschel, pretending to be an admirer and inviting him for drinks at a bar on the Westside. Though I longed for the security of my dad’s bar, no way could I risk someone blurting out my real name. So I dropped Rosie at the airport and took off across the Rio Grande. Rosie would have to be there a few hours before her plane departed, but I had a plan to keep Herschel busy for the entire night. I goaded him into hitting me and pressed charges. Not that it was easy. Flirting like a vixen in heat then pulling the emergency brake in such a way that the mark felt like I’d just slapped him took skill. And naturally, a man like Herschel would take great offense to being led on. Throw in a few insults about small penises and a degrading giggle or two, and the fists start flying.

While I could have just gotten him drunk-off-his-ass wasted, then dumped him in an alley somewhere, I couldn’t risk him finding Rosie gone until the morning. One night in jail was all we needed. And now she was well on her way to an esteemed career as a posadera.

“This is it,” Elizabeth said.

“Oh, here,” I said, relaying the info to Garrett. “This house on the corner?”

She nodded.

And she was right where she said she’d be. I saw her shoes first, red and sharp and expensive; then I glanced at departed Elizabeth’s. Perfect match. That was good enough for me. I strolled back to the porch and plopped down while Garrett and the officer called it in.

While I was busy scolding myself for not examining the body and scouring the crime scene for clues like a real PI would, a blur in my peripheral vision captured my attention. It wasn’t like a normal blur, the kind that everyone sees. This was darker, more … solid.

I’d glanced to the side as fast as I could, but I’d missed it. Again. That’d been happening a lot lately. Dark blurs in my periphery. I figured either Superman died and was swooshing around the country at the speed of light — because dead people don’t move that fast; they appear out of nowhere and disappear the same way — or I was having lots of those little ministrokes that would someday lead to massive and devastating cerebral hemorrhaging.

I totally needed to have my cholesterol checked.

Of course, there was another possibility. One I hadn’t really wanted to consider. But it would explain a lot.

I’d never been afraid of the unknown, like other people. Things like the dark or monsters or the bogeyman. I suppose if I had been, I wouldn’t have made a proper grim reaper. But something or someone was stalking me. I’d tried for weeks to convince myself that I was imagining it. But I’ve seen only one thing in my life move that fast. And it was the only thing on Earth, or the hereafter, that terrified me.

I’d never quite worked out the reasoning behind my unnatural fear, because the being had never hurt me. Truth be known, it had saved my life on several occasions. When I was almost kidnapped as a child by a paroled sex offender, it saved me. When Owen Vaughn tried to run me down with his dad’s Suburban in high school, it saved me. When I was being stalked in college and eventually attacked, it saved me. At the time, I hadn’t taken the stalking thing that seriously until it showed up. Only then did I realize, almost too late, that my life had been in danger.

So, you’d think I’d be more grateful. But it wasn’t just that it had saved my life. It was the way it had saved my life. The ability to sever a man’s spinal cord in half without leaving any visible evidence as to what happened was a tad disconcerting.

And in high school, when other teens were trying desperately to figure out who they were, where they fit in the world, it told me what I was. It whispered the role I would play in life into my ear as I was applying lip gloss in the girls’ bathroom, words I never heard, words that lay thick in the air, waiting for me to breathe them in, to accept who I was, what I would become. As girls fluttered around me for glimpses in the mirror, I could see only him, standing over me, a huge cloaked figure bearing down on me like a suffocating vacuum.

I’d stood there for a solid fifteen minutes after the other girls left, after he left, barely breathing, unable to move until Mrs. Worthy busted me for skipping and sent me to the office.

He was basically dark and creepy and just sort of showed up in my life every so often to impart some juicy tidbit of afterlife wisdom — and scare the bejesus out of me — only to leave me quaking in the wake of his visit. At least I was a bright and shiny grim reaper. He was dark and dangerous, and death seemed to waft off him like smoke off dry ice. When I was a child, I decided to name him something ordinary, something nonthreatening, but Fluffy just didn’t fit. Eventually, he was christened the Big Bad.

“Ms. Davidson,” Elizabeth said, sitting beside me.

I blinked and glanced around. “Did you just see someone?”

She scanned the area as well. “I don’t think so.”

“A blur? Kind of dark and … blurry?”

“Um, nope.”

“Oh, okay, sorry. What’s up?”

“I can’t have my nieces and nephew wake up to my body. I’m right under their windows.”

I’d thought of that, too. “You’re right,” I said. “Maybe we should break the news to your sister.”

She nodded sadly. I called Garrett over, and we agreed for me and the cop to ring the doorbell and give Elizabeth’s sister the news. Maybe Elizabeth could help me with what to say. Her presence might make the whole thing easier on us all. At least I’d thought so.

An hour later, I was in my uncle’s SUV, breathing into a paper bag.

“You should have waited for me,” he said really helpfully.

Never again. Obviously there were siblings out there who actually liked each other. Who knew? The woman had an emotional breakdown in my arms. What seemed to upset her most was the fact that Elizabeth had been outside her house all night and she hadn’t known. I might should’ve left that part out. The woman grabbed my shoulders, her fingernails digging into my skin, her morning hair, a cross between disco and crack addict, shaking in denial; then she crumpled to the floor and sobbed. Most definitely an emotional breakdown.

The bad part came when I crumpled to the floor and sobbed with her. Dead people I could handle. They were usually beyond hysteria. This was the people-left-behind part. The hard part. We hugged each other a long time until Uncle Bob arrived on-scene and dragged me off her. Elizabeth’s brother-in-law got the kids ready, and they all went out a side door and loaded up the car for a trip to Grandma’s house. All in all, they were a very loving family.

“Slow down,” Uncle Bob said as I panted into the bag. “If you hyperventilate and pass out, I’m not catching you. I injured my shoulder playing golf the other day.”

My family was so caring. I tried to slow my breathing, but I just kept thinking about that poor woman losing her sister, her best friend, her comadre. What would she do now? How would she go on? Where would she find the will to survive? I started crying again, and Uncle Bob gave up and left me alone in his SUV.

“She’ll be okay, hon.”

I looked in the rearview mirror at Elizabeth and sniffed.

“She’s tough,” she added.

I could tell she was shaken up, and I probably wasn’t helping.

I sniffed again. “I’m sorry. I should never have gone in there.”

“No, I appreciate you being there for my sister instead of a bunch of male cops. Sometimes guys just don’t get it.”