Guardian's Hope (18 page)

Canaan rapped his knuckles against the wood
to bring the table to order. All eyes turned to Nardo who stood at
one end. He wore a navy t-shirt that proclaimed “WHO GIVES A SHIT?”
in bold yellow letters.

“Because of our previous conversation,” he
began, “I started comparing weather conditions to demon activity
and I got a little sidetracked when I found some of the satellite
imagery available to the public on some weather sites. I mean, why
hack if you don’t have to. It’s pretty neat stuff and, well, one
thing led to another.”

“He means he was screwing around.”

“Dov’s right. I was screwing around,” Nardo
admitted. “I checked out our House, some places in the
neighborhood. Even took a peek at Manon’s place in the country. You
ever been there? It’s really something. Anyway, I took a look at
that demon’s bitchwitch’s place, where you and Grace sent them both
back to hell. It’s vacant, you know. No for sale sign. Nothing. I
don’t think there’s anyone to know she’s gone. No family and
hanging out with demons, I doubt she’s got any friends.”

“And I’m sure this is leading up to something
because you called us all together,” Canaan interrupted.

“Oh, yeah, sure. Just giving a little
background, my lord.”

Nardo picked up a small remote and aimed it
at a white box attached to the ceiling. Light projected onto a
white screen that took up a large section of the back wall. Moving
from the old library to the back room had quadrupled his space and
he was apparently taking full advantage of his new quarters. He
tapped a few keys on one of the computers and the screen came to
life.

“Cool. Can we watch movies on this
thing?”

“Sure…”

“No,” Canaan frowned. “You’ve got that
monster flat screen in the other room for that. I want this room
kept strictly for business.”

“Does that mean I can’t surf the net?”

Col rolled his eyes. “Dov, you’re quibbling
again.”

“Quibbling? Well, thank you Daniel Webster.
What is it with you and this new-word-of-the-day shit?” Dov gave
his twin a disgusted look.

Broadbent raised his finger to be recognized.
“If I may, that’s Noah Webster, not Daniel. Daniel is the one
involved with the devil. It’s a story written…”

“Later.” Canaan held up his hand to Broadbent
and looked at Nardo. “Can we get on with this?”

“Okay. This is our place.” An aerial view of
their House of Guardian’s appeared on the screen. Using a laser, he
pointed to the screen. A red dot appeared on the back patio.

“Needless to say, this was taken at night,
but there’s enough light from the security light to make out some
of the stuff back there. See, there’s the swing Grace bought and
those dark spots on the rail are the flower thingies Hope planted.
And look at this.” He tapped the screen and the picture changed.
“This is Otto’s and Manon’s place. Look who’s sneaking a cigar in
the alley.”

They all laughed. The tiny figure wasn’t
recognizable, but everyone knew it was Otto. Manon hated his smelly
cigars, but Otto refused to quit. Canaan cleared his throat.

“Moving right along,” Nardo tapped the screen
again, several times, and the pictures flashed by too quickly to
recognize. “Anyone who’s interested can look at that stuff later.
This is what I wanted you to see.”

“Hope’s house.” It was Nico.

“Yep. Now the picture’s really dark and I’ve
only got the street light to work with, but I want you to look at
that dark spot. There.” The red dot of the laser appeared next to a
row of dark shadows.

“Those are the bushes between her house and
the neighbors,” said Col.

“That’s what I thought, too. Now look at
this.”

The picture changed and so did the placement
of the shadows.

“Bushes don’t move.”

“Right, so now I’m curious. I start moving
the picture around.” The pictures on the screen changed as he
tapped and spoke. “See this car? It’s parked there almost every
night. And you’re probably thinking, ‘Why not? It probably belongs
to someone on the street.’ Maybe, but if it does, this guy’s in
deep shit with the little woman because he’s spending his nights in
the family car.” He looked around the table. “I’m thinking the
moving shrubbery was this guy taking a leak. So I start checking
every few hours. If somebody’s watching, he can’t do it twenty
four-seven. Right? Sure enough, they’re working in six hour shifts.
I stayed up all day to get these.”

It was clear from the pictures, that Nardo
was right. A crew was watching Hope’s house.

“How did they find it?” Nico asked the
question more of himself than the others. “She paid her rent up
front in cash, utilities included. No phone, no mail unless it’s
addressed to resident. How the hell did they find her?”

“Through the rental agency.”

Everyone stared at Dov.

“What?” He shrugged. “Look, she’s got no
phone and no bills. No nothing with her name on it except the
lease. She either rented from a person or an agency and I’m betting
on an agency. If she was paying cash up front, they maybe skipped
the credit check, but she sure as hell would’ve signed something
and I don’t think she’d use a false name. Why would she? Her middle
name is Honest Abe and she wouldn’t think anyone was gonna be
looking for her.”

“There has to be dozens of agencies in this
city,” Nico cut in, “How would they know where to look? They didn’t
have a name.”

Dov threw his hands in the air. “How the hell
would I know? Ask the boy genius,” he pointed at Nardo, “that’s his
department. And if you’ve got a better idea, I’d like to hear it
‘cause as far as I can see, it’s the only thing that makes sense.
If they knew where she lived before, they would’ve picked her up at
her house and not tried to do grab her off the street. She didn’t
even have a wallet that night. Everything was in her coat pocket
and her key was around her neck.”

Nico’s hand slammed down onto the table. His
chair scraped the floor as he pushed away. “I’ll be right
back.”

“Oh, oh,” Col stretched his mouth in a
grimace. “Somebody’s pissed.”

“He has a right to be. We should have seen
this.”

“Sorry, my lord.”

“Cut the ‘my lord’ shit. It’s not your fault.
It’s mine. We’ve been concentrating on the bars Hope didn’t go to,
asking about her sister. We should’ve been looking at the ones
she’d already been to. I don’t know if this is connected with her
sister or she’s picked up a stalker.”

“If it’s a stalker,” Broadbent cut in, “It’s
a wealthy one. Round the clock surveillance doesn’t come
cheap.”

Canaan nodded his agreement. “Either way, we
need to backtrack and find the bar where someone took an
interest.”

“Bloodsuckers. Where I found her,” Nico said
as he came through the door. “She had the key ring in her purse,
the purse she lost at Bloodsuckers. Kelmar Realty.”

“I’m on it.” Nardo was at his desk typing
before he finished the sentence. Scanning quickly, he clicked twice
on the screen. He stared at the printed material for a moment and
then said, “Whoa. I think Dov’s onto something, but it’s not going
to do us much good.”

“Figures.”

“Not your fault. This isn’t proof, mind you,
but I’m not a big believer in coincidence.” He tapped the screen.
“Newspaper article. Kelmar Realty burned to the ground with the
owner inside. It was a one woman operation that specialized in
residential leasing. All records lost. No sign of foul play. Seems
Mrs. Kelmar was a heavy smoker. They figure she fell asleep at her
desk.” He looked up at Canaan. “There has to be an autopsy. You
want me to check it out?”

“Absolutely.”

“Boss?”

“Yeah?”

Nardo’s eyes slid to Nico and he said slowly,
“I got something else you probably need to know. They found another
body. North about a hundred and fifty miles. Same as the others.
Suspected suicide, extremely ill, mid-twenties. That’s all I got.
No ID, no autopsy report. Not yet anyway. Fisherman hauled her up
out of a local lake. Small town paper’s screaming possible murder.
Maybe for the headline, maybe ‘cause someone’s doing their
homework. Don’t know if the big guys are paying attention yet, but
it’s only a matter of time.”

“How long have you had this?” Nico asked. His
finger tapped the table in a steady beat.

“I put it together last night. Story’s about
two days old. I’ve flagged every paper within a two hundred mile
radius, but a lot of the small towns up north aren’t much more than
villages, really, and their rags are weekly and not on line. A
body’s a big deal, storywise, but I don’t know how the cops will
react.”

Broadbent sat and listened with his elbows on
the table, hands steepled over his mouth. When he spoke, all heads
turned. “I think Nardo’s right about the story value of a
suspicious death in a small town. Had ‘homework’ been done, I
believe the reported would have published the findings. On the
other hand, a young, obviously dying young woman choosing a
peaceful and bucolic setting to end it all sounds rather romantic
and entirely possible. The authorities here in the city ruled
Nico’s find a suicide without an autopsy. Most small towns in this
state have an elected coroner, not necessarily a pathologist…” He
looked over at Dov and Col “…a doctor specializing in death and
disease. It would be easy to rule a suicide.”

“Hope’s going to want an ID,” Nico said
quietly. “We can’t keep this from her.”

“All I’ve got is Caucasian female about five
foot five, dark curly hair, blue eyes, approximate weight ninety to
a hundred pounds.”

“It fits.”

“Ninety pounds? She’d be a bag of bones. And
why approximate?” Col wanted to know.

Broadbent answered. “She’d been extremely ill
and if she’d been in the water for a while, there’d be damage and
decomposition.” He looked over at Nico. “We have to decide what to
do about Hope?”

“
We
don’t have to decide anything.
I’ll
talk to Hope and
I’ll
let
you
know.” Nico
tapped the table twice, pushed back his chair and walked out.

“In this corner, ladies and gentleman,
wearing a dorky tweed jacket and bow tie, we have the Professor,”
Dov announced into his fist while Col provided the roar of a crowd.
“And in this corner, in black Armani, Mr. GQ.” Boos and hisses
followed.

“This isn’t a contest.” Broadbent seemed
amused.

“Maybe you missed it, Prof. It was kind of
subtle, but I’d say you just got bitch slapped.”

“One does what one can for one’s
friends.”

Chapter 18

Hope read the pages of the novel carefully,
as if it were a text book. This was the third such book she’d read
and she needed to get it right. After all, if she’d read Nico’s
mind correctly, there was going to be a test in her future. She was
determined to get an A. It wasn’t going to be easy. Some of the
things these characters did with each other were beyond her
imagining, yet the flashes she received from Nico’s imagination
told her he was heading in the same general direction and she
didn’t think he read these types of books.

In spite of what the others thought, she
wasn’t completely naïve. She knew where babies came from and how
they got there. She’d thought the process was fairly
straightforward, in and out so to speak, in what she now knew was
called the missionary position. She smiled at the reference. It was
one she understood. She’d never found the idea of the act
particularly appealing and thought of it more in terms of animal
husbandry; something that must be done to produce offspring. She’d
often daydream about having children of her own but rarely did she
think about the getting of them.

Apparently, if you could believe these
novels, and they were fiction after all, the getting of children
wasn’t the purpose at all. The purpose was to share in mutual
pleasure and oh my how these characters shared! In every
conceivable position. And every conceivable place! In the bed, on
the floor, on the table, on the sofa, even out of doors. The list
went on and on.

She had to admit, she liked these stories of
romance and adventure and the sex scenes certainly sent a spicy
tingle to places where she’d never felt one before, but she simply
couldn’t see herself crying out in the throes of ecstasy as the
women in these novels did. And while Nico certainly filled the role
of hero to perfection, she couldn’t picture him fiddling about in
places it embarrassed her to think of. Still, she kept reading and
found herself looking for more.

All things will come in time, she thought.
There was no pressure from Nico. She would read and learn and
sooner or later, she’d be able to do the things she knew would make
him happy. If only she didn’t have to do them naked.

A hand waved in front of her face and she
jumped out of the fog of her musings. The book slid to the floor at
her feet and she reached for it, hoping to snatch it up and hide it
alongside the cushion where no one could see the title or the
cover. She was too late.

Nico smiled that knowing half smile as he
checked the covers, front and back. “One of Grace’s or one of your
own?” he asked with eyebrows raised.

“G-Grace thought I might enjoy it,” she
stammered.

“And do you?” The corner of his mouth
twitched.

He was teasing her. He knew she’d be
embarrassed and was enjoying the prolonging of it. He was no better
than the twins.

“Yes,” she answered with her head up and
shoulders back, “I am. The story is very exciting and the sexy
parts are exciting, too!”

She had a ‘so there!’ look on her face that
almost made him laugh, he was so pleased to see the little spark of
fire, but he held the laughter in check. He tapped the picture of
the muscular half naked man on the front as he handed it back.