Sweet Dreams, Irene (20 page)

“Irene. Don’t let him get to you. He’s just trying to scare you.”

“I wasn’t one-tenth as scared as I would have been if you weren’t here. Thanks for sticking up for me.” We slowly made our way to her car. “By the way, what was that last thing you said to him in Italian?”

She laughed. “I told him, ‘Take a good shit, you’ll feel better.’”

I
GAVE HER DIRECTIONS
to Rhiannon. When we pulled up in front of the shop, Rachel looked at me with wide eyes.

“You’re going in there?”

“Want to come along?”

“And have some old
strega
put the
malocchio
on me?” She held up her index and little finger on one hand like horns and spat three times between them.

I laughed and made my way into the store. The idea of Zoe putting an evil eye on someone amused me to no end.

“Zoe, do you do hexes?” I asked by way of greeting. I found I was beginning to enjoy the spicy smell of the shop.

“Hello, Irene! As a general rule, no. The main tenet of Wicca is ‘Harm no one and do as thou wilt.’ Hexes are not to be taken lightly.” She had her back to me and was spreading some powder on the window sills of the shop. She turned and saw me, and took in my injuries with a quick glance. “You have a very strong spirit, Irene, which has served you well. I’m sorry you were hurt.”

“I’m healing,” I said. “What are you doing?”

“Oh,” she said, smiling. “Putting out protection powder—an ancient herbal recipe for protection from thieves.”

“Have you had problems with break-ins?”

“No, but I dreamed that someone broke in and stole an athalme.”

I searched my memory. “A knife?”

“A ritual knife. Come into the back, I’ll show you.”

Setting the cane aside, I followed her through the narrow aisles, dodging boxes of herbs yet unpacked. She talked as we made our way. “There are four elements: air, earth, water, and fire. The athalme represents the air element. It is used to separate sacred ground from the rest.”

“Separate it?”

“The athalme is used to draw a circle on the ground in an unbroken manner. It is never used to cut anything. Another knife is needed for cutting herbs and so on.”

We came to a glass case filled with knives. Most had long, black handles. Zoe explained that most athalmes were black-handled. I glanced over some white-handled knives, and then my eyes came to rest on something that made me stand stock-still.

A knife with an animal foot on its handle.

“Oh, you’ve noticed the deer-foot knife,” she said, seeming embarrassed. “I know, I should get it out of here. Maybe that’s what the dream was about.”

“Deer-foot?”

“Someone convinced me that some witches liked the representation of the goddess in the hoof. I had four of them. This is the only one that’s left, and I don’t think I like it. In fact, I didn’t like the auras of the men who purchased the other three.”

“Were the others purchased all at the same time? By two brothers?”

She looked at me and said, “Yes, I suppose they could have been bothers, though I’m not sure. But they were here at the same time and bought the knives together.”

I described Devon and Raney.

“Yes, that sounds like them. How did you know they were the ones who bought the knives?”

I hesitated. I knew she had been fond of Sammy. I didn’t want Zoe to know that one of the knifes might have been used to kill her. “I’m not sure. Just a feeling that it was something they might do. They’re the ones who did this to me. Well, most of it.”

She sensed my mood change and said, “Well, I told you I had a little something for you.” She pulled two stones out of her pocket. “I hope you will accept these with an open mind.”

One was oblong and dark green, roughly the diameter of a pencil, a little less than two inches long. The other, nearly the diameter of a dime, was rounded and transparent, a light purple color. “Jade and amethyst,” she said, as I took them from her. “Jacob tells me that you have trouble sleeping. The amethyst has long been regarded as able to cure insomnia, relieve pain and tension, even to give prophetic dreams. The ancients believed that jade gives health and long life, accurate judgment, and protection from nightmares. I want you to have these.”

Doubt as I might that two little stones could do all that, the kindness of the gesture was not lost on me. “Thank you, Zoe. I’ll give them a try.”

“I’ll miss Sammy,” she said softly. “She was a bright and eager student of Wicca. She seemed happy just to come in here and ask questions about herbs and spells and charms. I enjoyed her company. May she sleep in bliss until she returns. Blessed be.”

We both stood for a while, thinking our own thoughts. I rolled the stones over in my hand.

“Zoe,” I said, “I’d like to buy that last knife.”

She gave a start, and stared at me. But then she said, “Of course.” She unlocked the case and gave me the knife. It was in a leather sheath and had a brass hilt on it. The fur on the handle was soft and the cloven black hoof on the end was hard and shiny. I couldn’t unsheathe it with one hand, so she drew it out for me. The blade was about five inches long and had a blood groove in it. It looked mean enough, all right. I thought of a similar knife cutting out Sammy’s heart, and felt sick.

Zoe sheathed the knife again and said, “Be very careful, Irene.”

I forced a smile and reached into my pocket. I dropped the stones into it and pulled out the money to pay for the knife.

“No, take it,” Zoe said.

I shook my head. “I’ll pay for it. I don’t want the protection powder working against me as a thief.”

She smiled and took the cash. She gave me my change and put the knife in a bag. I gathered up my cane, then thanked her for the stones and told her I’d let her know if they worked for me.

Outside, Rachel was looking worried, and I felt bad about spending so much time inside the store. “What’s in the bag?” she asked.

“Bambi’s right foot,” I said.

She made a face of pure disgust.

I reached into my pocket and held on to the stones.

A
S SOON AS WE
were back home, Rachel called Frank to let him know what had happened. He was furious with Gannet, but there wasn’t much any of us could do about it.

As the afternoon wore on, I found myself fumbling with the stones in my pockets. It had an odd meditative effect, reminding me somewhat of how it used to feel to handle rosary beads, something I hadn’t done in years. I was able to think things through a little more calmly.

I realized that Gannet would not be trying to intimidate me unless he thought I could in some way connect him to the murders. If he felt safe, he wouldn’t have risked bullying me, especially not out on the streets of downtown Las Piernas. I couldn’t figure out exactly what it was I was supposed to know, but it was clear that he was convinced I could cause him trouble. I mentally replayed the conversations I had overheard in the mountains, all to no avail.

Lydia relieved Rachel from Kelly-duty at about six o’clock that evening. She noticed I was feeling edgy, and so I told her about the events of the afternoon. Since the day I told Jack what had happened in the mountains, I had found it easier to tell other friends about it, so Lydia knew why being caught out on the street with Gannet was upsetting to me. She had some novel ideas about fitting punishments for Mr. Gannet. Italians, I was reminded, had coined the term “vendetta.” Still, as time passed without my being able to determine what Gannet was after, my nervousness increased.

We called out for a pizza, each drinking a glass of red wine while we waited for it. Jack stopped by and asked me if I wanted to go sailing with him late the next afternoon, to try to catch the sunset. I readily agreed. He left, we had a second glass of wine, and the pizza arrived. I was making slow progress through my first piece when Lydia suddenly said, “What if it isn’t Gannet?”

“After the way he acted today?”

“There could be other reasons for that, Irene.”

“Such as?”

“You’re a reporter. It happens all the time—I know this isn’t the first time someone has tried to intimidate you. Maybe he fears that you’ll harm his reputation, write some story about him that will cause him to lose his standing in the community.”

“I don’t believe he’s really worried about that.”

“Sure he is. Or at least, he could be. He’s a businessman. More than that—a developer. He depends on people in City Hall to cooperate with permits and zoning regulations and hand over all sorts of other approvals. If you wrote something implicating him in a murder investigation—especially this one, with Satanism being hinted at—you know no one on the City Council would go anywhere near him.”

“He’s probably got a certificate of ownership for every vote he needs on the council,” I said.

“Cynic.”

“Realist.”

“Even if you’re right, you’ve covered politics long enough to know that buying politicians never comes with a money-back guarantee. Gannet can’t be that sure of their support. Abandoning him might mean some of them would have to scramble for funds from somewhere else, but that’s not as bad as being linked to a homicidal Satanist. Counteracting that kind of bad press is very expensive.”

“Okay, suppose you’re right. He doesn’t want a story to appear. That doesn’t mean he isn’t guilty.”

“No, but it doesn’t mean he is, either.”

“I don’t know, Lydia. I’m not in any shape to write anything up. Why would he be worried, when I’m not even back at the newspaper?”

“You said he knew about the warrant?”

“Yes. He has highly placed friends, all right.”

“Well, don’t you see? You’re already causing him to call in his markers, just to keep any possible link with these murder cases quiet. Even if he has nothing to hide, he probably can’t afford the notoriety an investigation would cause.”

I had lost interest in the pizza.

“Look, Irene, you could be right. But I’m just trying to get you to keep an open mind about it.”

“Maybe you’re right. If it’s not Gannet, I don’t have any idea of who else it might be. Maybe that’s why I was so anxious to have Frank pursue him—I don’t have anyone else in mind.”

“You don’t?”

Something about the way she said it caught my attention. “Am I missing something?”

She shrugged. “Ignoring someone, maybe.”

“Who?”

“Jack.”

“No way.”

She didn’t say anything, just went back to her pizza.

“Lydia, you can’t say something like that and then just go on eating. Jack
saved
my life, remember?”

“Did he? Or did he shut Paul up before he could tell you who put him up to killing his grandmother?”

“Jesus Christ, Lydia! That is an incredibly cruel thing to say.”

“Forget it,” she said, shoving her pizza away.

“Listen, I know he looks frightening, but he’s really a very gentle person. Every time I’ve felt down lately, Jack has been able to cheer me up. He’s smart and funny and—”

“Forget it!” she said again, much more sharply.

There was an awful silence. She started to stand up, but I reached over and took hold of her arm.

“No, wait—don’t go. I’m sorry, Lydia.” She sat back down. I shook my head. “Lately I seem to just steamroll over other people’s feelings without thinking. If it’s any comfort, you’re not the only one I’ve done this to. Ask Frank. He’s put up with a lot.”

“I’m sorry too. I forget that you haven’t really had time to deal with any of this yet. It’s only been a couple of weeks. I never should have said anything about Jack, even introduced a worry about him. You’re scared enough as it is. I’m certain Frank would never leave you here alone with someone who couldn’t be trusted.”

“Let’s forget the whole thing. You’re probably right about Gannet. And I’m sure that if you get to know Jack, you’ll like him as much as Frank and I do. There could be any number of other people interested in Mrs. Fremont’s land. I’m just not able to research that right now.”

We settled into safer topics, primarily newsroom gossip. Sitting at the City Desk at the
Express,
Lydia had the best seat in the house for gathering it. We then went on to Catholic school memories, which have provided an unfailing distraction for both of us in times of trouble over the years. There was, for example, our running disagreement on how many days suspension I served for barricading Sister Mary Elizabeth in the school library in eighth grade.

Frank got home at about nine o’clock, and Lydia left. He looked tired. He took off his shoes, loosened his tie, and plopped down on the couch. I mixed a scotch and water for him; he appreciated the effort. As he drank it, I showed him the knife, and explained that Devon and Raney had bought the other three.

“So that’s where the deer hair came from,” he said, studying it. “I’ll have to show it to Carlos. Of course, any number of these knives may be available at other places in town, but given what Zoe told you and what you heard Devon and Raney say, I’d assume we now have some idea of what the murder weapon looked like.”

“If we found Paul’s knife, could we prove anything against Gannet?”

“I don’t know. Carlos could run DNA tests on the blood on the knife to see if it matched Gannet’s. If it did, it would be up to the D.A. to decide if that would help make a case against him.”

“The same D.A. who apparently decided to tell Gannet you were seeking a search warrant?”

“We don’t know that it was the D.A.’s office that gave us away. To be perfectly honest, I doubt we could get more than an accessory charge out of any of this, and a good defense lawyer would be able to get him off without a lot of effort.” He paused, then said, “You’re scared of him, aren’t you?”

“He knows who we are and where we live; he knows our friends—he even knew Rachel spoke Italian. Just this morning you asked about getting a search warrant, and he must have learned about your request within minutes. He found me out on the streets of downtown Las Piernas, when only you and Rachel knew we were going shopping at all, and when I was the only one who knew what store we were going to, so someone must have been following us. Yes, I’m afraid.”

He was quiet.

“I’m afraid,” I went on, “but I also realize that if he’s putting that much effort into trying to make us back off, he’s more afraid than I am.”

“He’s also unpredictable. And very possibly arranged everything that happened to you.” Hearing the anger in his voice, I began to hope he never ran into Gannet on his own; if he did, he was the one who was going to need a good defense lawyer.

I
HAD ANOTHER
nightmare that night, a real screamer. I woke up to find Frank looking more concerned than usual.

“Jesus, Irene, are you all right?”

I nodded. “Just the strain of the day, I suppose.”

“I swear I’m going to get a restraining order put on Gannet. You haven’t had a nightmare this bad since you first came home.”

We settled back into bed, and he turned out the light.

“Frank?”

“Hmm.”

“Who’s coming over tomorrow, while you’re at work?”

“Jack. The guy’s been great. Don’t know what we’d do without him.” He felt me shiver. “Are you cold?”

“A little,” I said, snuggling closer. It wasn’t the truth, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell him who had been chasing me in my dreams.

J
ACK ARRIVED JUST
after Pete stopped by to ride into work with Frank the next day. By light of day, the dream fears receded and had no hold on me. Jack was no monster, he was a concerned friend. I went back to bed and caught up on my sleep, not waking up again until the early afternoon. But once I was awake, I felt restless.

Jack was sitting on the couch, reading more verses of Ovid’s
Metamorphoses.
He looked up from it and assessed my mood in a moment. “Frank called to say he was working late again,” he said. “I told him I might take you sailing if you were still up for it. Maybe Lydia and Guy would like to come along, too. What do you say?”

“Sure,” I said, feeling certain that Lydia would refuse the last minute invitation; she probably wouldn’t want to be out on the ocean with a man she thought to be a murderer. But when I called her, she readily accepted the offer, saying that she’d meet us at the marina coffeeshop.

A few minutes later, she called back to say Guy could make it as well. I detected a note of relief in her voice when she made that announcement. I supposed the company of a former professional hockey defenseman made her feel safer. I began to wonder if she had decided to go along because she thought I might be in danger from Jack.

Later that afternoon, as he helped me put on a sweater and shoe in preparation for our outing, Jack said, “Oh, I forgot to tell you—Frank said Bredloe had approved surveillance of Malcolm Gannet.”

“What made Bredloe change his mind?”

“I asked Frank the same thing,” Jack said. “He told me it was a combination of things. Bredloe was angry that there was some kind of leak of information between his office and the D.A. He was also unhappy to hear about what happened downtown yesterday. I guess that did it.”

Cody made a pain of himself by streaking past us when we went out the door. “Get back here!” I yelled after him, an utterly useless command to give the willful little bugger. He stood in the middle of the street, staring back at me and twitching his tail, as if to say, “Come on, Gimpy, just try to catch me.”

“Jack?” I pleaded.

Jack took one step toward him and he scurried beneath a cable TV van across the street. He crouched there, watching Jack. I could swear the cat was smirking.

“I can’t wait for Frank to get around to installing that cat door,” Jack said. “Are you sure you want Cody inside?”

“His dinner’s in there.”

Jack laughed. “He’ll be all right, then. It wouldn’t hurt Cody to miss a meal. But I’ll put a water dish out for him.”

The moment Jack opened the front door, of course, Cody hauled his gray buns back through it in a four-legged flash. No use starving if we weren’t up for playing hide-and-seek with him. He had achieved one of his standing goals, to make me late whenever possible. Jack took it all in stride. He locked the front door and helped me out to the car.

We traveled at a snail’s pace through late afternoon traffic until we made the turnoff down to the marina, which was virtually deserted. I looked for Lydia’s car but didn’t see it; Guy’s Mercedes wasn’t there either. “Don’t worry about it,” Jack said, reading my thoughts. “We’ll just have a cup of coffee while we wait for them.”

The moment we entered the small coffee shop, a large man I took to be the manager came out from behind the counter. “Hey, Jack! Long time no see! Got a message for you.”

“What’s up, Harry?” Jack asked.

Harry fumbled in the pocket of his shirt for a moment and then put on a pair of bifocals. “Let’s see. Lydia and Gee can’t make it.”

“Guy,” I said. “He’s French Canadian, so it rhymes with ‘key’.”

Harry scowled at me over the bifocals, then turned back to Jack. “I’ll let you get back to your date with the professor here.”

“Irene’s a reporter,” Jack said. Judging by Harry’s deepening scowl, being a reporter put me on a par with attorneys.

“We miss you around here, Jack,” Harry said, turning his back on us. “Drop by again sometime.”

Jack grinned at me and said, “Ignore him. Harry was born grumpy.”

“And never seen any reason to change my outlook,” Harry called out, as Jack held the door open for me.

“We’d better get going if we want to catch the sunset,” Jack said.

I tried not to make too much of “Gee” and Lydia’s cancellation, and followed Jack outside.

On board the
Pandora,
Jack had to do almost all of the work, but he didn’t seem to mind. He set the engine on idle, and I thought we would motor out, but we made our way out of the marina completely under sail. “Why did you start the engine if you weren’t going to use it?” I asked when he turned it off again.

“Oh, just a precaution. The wind or the current might have shifted while we were leaving the dock.”

A steady wind picked up off the starboard, and we managed to get out past the breakwater just as the sun was starting to set. The sunset was a glorious combination of colors and clouds and shafts of sunlight, making up what Lydia and I used to call “a religious sky”—a term I no doubt remembered as a result of our previous night’s discussion.