I greeted her as pleasantly as I could manage, even offering her a cup of coffee.
“No, thanks.” She brushed past me, taking a seat on the living room couch without being asked. I didn’t mind. I’d have liked to be closer, but it just never seemed to work out, perhaps because we were both so strong- willed and stubborn. Those two qualities had helped Alex to rise to detective in the competitive boys’ club atmosphere of the police department. They’d helped me make a success of my business, guarding other people. They probably also made us too much alike to ever be completely at ease with each other.
Alex was dressed for work in a black pantsuit with a faint pale blue pinstripe that matched her prim cotton blouse. The jacket didn’t quite manage to conceal the weapons she carried. I suppose that was understandable. On a public servant’s salary she wasn’t likely to be able to afford special tailoring or concealing magics. She’d inherited a bit from Vicki, but I knew that money had gone into her retirement fund and to charity.
“You haven’t been answering your phone.” She fingered the anti-siren charm at her neck when she said it. The charm had been made using my own hair, giving her special protection from me personally as well as other sirens. She hadn’t asked, but I’d had it made for her. She’d needed to be able to prove I wasn’t influencing her on the job. It had taken a lot for me to give it to her. A person’s hair can be used to do some pretty serious bad magic to her. I had to trust that Alex didn’t wish me ill and wouldn’t let anyone who did get hold of the charm. I had to trust that she’d destroy it before she’d let it be used against me. Vicki had trusted her like that. I still wasn’t sure I did.
Had she tried to call? I must have slept through it. There was a hint of accusation in her voice, an edge to her voice that made it more than a simple observation.
“I’ve had a lot on my mind.” I took a seat on the chair facing her. Looking into those intense blue eyes, I knew that something big was up. So it wasn’t a surprise when she started grilling me.
“What do you know about a woman who called herself Abigail Andrews?”
“Look, Alex, I just woke up. Can we do this in the kitchen? I need some coffee, and I need to eat.”
“Fine.” She rose. “This could take awhile.”
She followed me into the kitchen, pulling up a chair as I puttered around, starting a big pot of coffee and choosing my baby food breakfast. I didn’t rush. There was no point. I knew Alex well enough to know that she wouldn’t budge until she got the answers she was looking for.
“In answer to your question, I don’t know Ms. Andrews well at all. I met her at La Cocina the other day. She was thinking of hiring me to guard her daughter, but we didn’t hit it off. I thought she was lying through her teeth and hiding things from me. She thought I had an attitude problem.”
Alex snorted, her mouth quirking in a grin she couldn’t quite manage to suppress. “You? An attitude problem? Surely not.”
I didn’t argue. It was not, after all, an argument I could win and we both knew it.
“Then what?”
“She left. I ate lunch, had a drink, and left.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. You can check with Barbara if you’d like. She’ll confirm it.”
Alex nodded. I got the impression that she’d known what I’d say, that I was just verifying information she already had. That was odd, and it made me worry, just a little. So I volunteered more information than I might otherwise have. “I did a little research on the Internet later, just from idle curiosity. Couldn’t turn anything up on Andrews or the guy she said I’d be guarding her daughter from. I’m not surprised. Like I said before, I could tell she was lying. Then again, a lot of folks do.”
Alex gave another amused snort. “Don’t they just. Anything else?”
“No, why?”
“I take it you haven’t turned on the television or checked out the news online?”
Uh-oh. That sounded ominous. “Not in a couple of days.”
Alex looked at me as she said, “Abigail Andrews was abducted off the street in front of her apartment last night by a pair of masked men. We found the van they used a couple of blocks away. Ms. Andrews’s handbag was in the back, near an empty syringe that contained traces of a sedative. Your card was in her bag.”
Oh, hell and damnation. I hadn’t liked the woman, but still I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. “Do you want me to come down to the station and give an official statement?”
“No. Not yet, anyway. Neighbors and people on the street saw the abduction. The perps were two men and a driver, all in masks, all male. Nobody thinks you’re involved, but we’re hoping she may have told you something that can be of use.”
“Okay. I’m glad to help, but it isn’t much.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
I started at the beginning. The story didn’t take long to tell. After all, it had been a short meeting. “In all honesty, I got the impression that a lot, if not all, of what she told me was bullshit.”
“So she didn’t hire you,” Alex said, bringing me back to where we’d started, going over familiar ground to see if something new might pop into my memory. I’d been questioned similarly before. While the technique can be annoying as hell, it does sometimes work.
“Nope. Like I said, she stormed out of the restaurant.” Well, stormed as much as a woman in a wheelchair could. “If Barbara hadn’t been able to cancel the order I would’ve had to pay for it.” I paused, thinking about what Alex had … and hadn’t said. The phrasing she’d used was curious. “You said she ‘called herself’ Abigail Andrews. That wasn’t her real name?”
Alex’s expression grew pained. “I was hoping you hadn’t caught that.”
“Sorry.” I wasn’t really, and she knew it. After giving me a long, level look, she apparently decided to tell me what I wanted to know.
“No. It wasn’t her real name. She’d been using it for close to twenty-three years. But it was a fake.”
Close to twenty-three years. That rang a bell. A loud one.
She gave me a hard look. “You’ve remembered something else. What is it?”
“The man … Jacobs, she said he’d been in prison a little over twenty-two years. I think she was lying about the name. But I got her pretty rattled with my questions. Maybe she didn’t think to lie about the time line.”
“We’ll look into it.”
“Do you want me to…,” I started to offer, but Alex was shaking her head before I could finish the sentence.
“No. Really, no.” The expression on her face was stern and more than a little pained. “It’s nothing personal, Celia, but every time you get involved in something, everything goes to hell in a handbasket. I know it’s not your fault, but please, just let us handle it.”
Ow. That hurt. Nothing personal, my lily-white ass.
My displeasure must have been written on my face, because Alex winced. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to sound like that. But that curse mark of yours…”
Ah, yes, the curse mark. Damn Stefania. She’d been a queen of the sirens. Her psychic had seen something in my future she didn’t like, so Stefania put a death curse on my baby sister, Ivy, and me when we were children, hoping we wouldn’t live to cause her trouble. Ivy hadn’t. I, on the other hand, managed to live to adulthood and helped send her on her way to hell. About once a week I wish I could do it again, just for grins. “Fine, let me know if you need anything else from me.”
“I will.” She started to rise, then seemed to reconsider. “Do you want to explain why you’re avoiding the phone?” She settled back in her seat as if she was willing to wait until doomsday for an answer.
I hadn’t been, really. But I didn’t say that. Instead, I said, “It’s not connected to the case.”
“Don’t care,” she said, shaking her head. “You look like hell, Celia. I know we haven’t been close, but I do care about you. If you’re in the middle of another shit storm, I’d like to know. Maybe I can help. Even if I can’t, I’d like to think you know you can talk to me about whatever it is.”
I was touched and shocked in equal measure. Without Vicki as a buffer between us, Alex and I barely saw each other unless we were involved in a case together. Now she was extending an olive branch, or lifeline, without hesitation or reservation.
I’d wanted Gran to be the first to know. But Alex had lived through both Vicki’s death and the passing of her spirit months later, when she’d completed the thing she’d stayed on this plane for. She was in a unique position to understand what I was going through.
