Grave Alchemy Read online

  I awoke to find myself in a hard bed, surrounded by pea green walls. A full moon shone outside the open window, casting a shadow over the end of the bed. My head ached as I slid my eyes around the hospital room. Just off to the side, I noticed a dark figure sitting quietly in a chair. The moonlight illuminated the ragged scar running down his face and glinted off his silvery white teeth.

  He leaned closer and whispered, “So, you’re awake.”

  I should have been afraid of him, but I was too tired to give it much thought. “Disappointed you didn’t kill me earlier? Are you going to finish me off with that angel sword?”

  “What are you talking about? I don’t own an angel sword.”

  “I saw it, it flashed in the sunlight.”

  Dante covered his mouth in an attempt to stifle a laugh. “You probably saw the clippers I used to cut a hole in the hedge,” He took a breath and leaned toward me. “If you had listened me, you wouldn’t be lying in this bed.”

  I shifted up on my elbows, trying to put some distance between us. “Listen to you about what? Who are you? You’re not a doctor.” I reached for the call button and winced. This was the guy from the file room and Phineaus’ backyard. Why didn’t he just kill me while I was unconscious? “Are you here to finish the job?

  The man sat back looking amused. “Dante Ogden, and for the record, I don’t kill people. And I never signed up to be a knight in shining armor.” He rubbed his face and sighed. “I guess a thank you would be too much to expect from you.”

  So the mystery man finally had a name. “I wasn’t in distress until you attacked me. I heard the fighting and gunshots. And I saw you skulking around Mr. Pratt’s backyard, I think you killed Felix. Why are you staring at me? Just kill me and get it over with.”

  Dante ran his hands through his dark hair in frustration, “How many times do I have to tell you? I didn’t attack you, I saved you. And tempting though it may be, I don’t want to kill you. I didn’t kill Felix, and I didn’t kill the guy who attacked you. His partner was aiming at me and missed. You can’t keep sticking your nose in places where it doesn’t belong. There are people out there who won’t think twice about getting rid of you.”

  “What makes you think I’ve been nosing around?” We’d questioned that PI, but he was harmless—I think.

  He held up his fingers, bending each one turn as he counted off the points he was making. “You called the SIB after you broke into Phineaus Pratt’s home. And to make matters worse, you broke into Felix’s condo, questioned Tom Flinders and then went back and broke into his office. And to top it all, you confronted Ms. Santoro.”

  How the heck did he know all this? “You’ve been following me. Why?”

  Dante crossed his arms and flicked his gaze upward, but he didn’t respond to my question.

  “Someone tried to kill Noah and murdered Felix. I had to do something.” I stared back at him with as much confidence as I could muster. “And I can’t ignore the fact that someone tried to kill me. I will find out who’s responsible.”

  “You’re impossible. You almost died tonight. You’ve no idea what you’re doing, and that bullet missed you by less than an inch. If it’d been any closer, you’d be dead. You’re lucky all it did was singe your hair.”

  “My hair?” I reached up and felt it crunch beneath my fingers. “Crap, you’d think they would have cut it off when they stitched me up.” I guess Annie will have to dream up a new hairstyle for me. I turned back to Dante and glared at him. “Well, they missed, didn’t they. It was just a robbery, they didn’t expect to find me there.”

  Dante chuckled and shook his head, “Unbelievable, you’re putting yourself and your sister in danger. You need to stop. Go on vacation, hide out somewhere.”

  Was he serious? “Hide out till what’s over? I can’t just pick up and leave. I have a business to run and I have a job.” I paused for a breath as my head throbbed. “Besides, I have Basil to protect me.”

  “He didn’t do a very good job earlier, did he? If he hadn’t grabbed me, I would have caught the other guy. And what about your sister? Don’t you care if she’s in danger? I have a job as well, and it doesn’t involve saving you while you play cops and robbers.”

  “Like you saved Felix?” I huffed. “Sounds like you just look out for yourself.” I crossed my arms and looked away, hiding a smirk. “I hope you enjoyed the ride.”

  Dante rose and glared down at me. “Felix was my friend too, but he thought he was invincible. The great and venerable SIB recruited him, he was going to be their golden boy. He shouldn’t have been in that house. At the time, I was up to my neck in my own mess, when I realized what he was doing, it was too late.”

  “Wait, he made it into the SIB? How would a rogue know about that?”

  “Rogue? I’m not rogue and I’m not SIB. There’s no way I’d join them, they’re too much like cops.”

  “What are you then?” Now I was interested—what did this guy do for a living?

  “I’m freelance, I find and return the things people lose.”

  “Like a PI or a fortune hunter?”

  “More like a treasure hunter, but that’s beside the point. You got lucky, I might not be around to save you next time. Can’t you stick to reaping and burying?”

  Now he was back to being rude; I’d had enough of this for one night and I was tired. “No, I won’t drop it and I’m not up to sparring with you right now. Just go away, will you?” I closed my eyes and tried to turn over onto my side.

  Dante slipped a card into my hand and sighed, “At least promise you’ll call me if you need help.”

  I looked down at the card and nodded, hoping that agreeing with him would make him leave.

  Dante muttered as he left the room, “Pig headed woman, more trouble than she’s worth.”

  “I heard that.”

  The next afternoon found me wrapped up in a blanket on Basil’s sectional. He’d been feeding me hot chocolate and peanut butter cookies all morning. A worried looking Annie sat in a chair opposite me.

  “I know what the cops said. But what the heck happened, Zoey?” Annie asked incredulously, “How did you fall down the stairs and get yourself locked in the basement?”

  “I heard a noise and thought Basil was playing tricks on me. Then someone broke in the back door. I ran for the basement, fell down the stairs and broke the key card. What’s the place look like? I heard an awful lot of banging and crashing going on. Oh and I almost forgot, I heard gunshots.”

  Annie looked at Basil and sighed. “It’s a mess, in the hall and…your office. They found a dead guy on the floor near the basement, someone shot him.”

  “Yeah, I heard. Isn’t it great? Murder at the funeral home. That’ll be good for business.”

  “Well, we’re shut down until the mess is cleaned up. The cops finished with the crime scene this morning.”

  “What about the showroom?”

  “We got lucky, they didn’t touch it.”

  Basil, who had been sitting quietly until now, piped up, “Annie, Bella and I will clean it up. It looks like it got hit by a tornado.”

  “Was anything stolen?” I asked.

  Annie and Basil were gesturing to each other, neither wanting to answer.

  “What did they take? It can’t be that bad.” Nothing in my office was irreplaceable. How bad could it be?

  Basil turned away, so Annie answered, “Just the computer.”

  “You mean my new iMac?” I groaned. “That thing cost me a fortune, and it had all the office accounts on it. Oh well, I guess I can get another one and restore it from the backup.”

  “Umm…the external drive is gone too.” Basil added. “I told you to use the cloud. Did you listen to me? No, you didn’t.”

  “Anything else missing? What about the petty cash and the safe?”

  “No, the cash box was on the floor and they didn’t get into the safe.” Annie replied.

  “So, nothing but the computer, that’s kinda weird,” I said.
“Will you get my MacBook and phone? I left them on my desk. Hope they didn’t get broken.”

  “I’d better call Harvey and let him know,” Annie said as she rolled her eyes at me and picked up her phone.

  “What?” I asked. “Oh, they’re gone too? Well crap.”

  Basil looked at me and shook his head. “Insurance will pay for them, but in the meantime, I’ll order you replacements.”

  “I just paid off the credit card. I’m not sure I want to fill it up again.”

  “My treat, I have my own card now,” Basil said with a grin as he typed away.

  I was dozing on the couch later that afternoon when I remembered that we had to go to Natasha’s house for dinner. I smiled as I thought about having the perfect excuse and glanced over at Basil. “Hey Basil, tell Annie to cancel the dinner at Natasha’s house.”

  “She already did,” Basil replied, “it’s still on though. She insisted that we go tomorrow and Annie agreed. But if you keep playing sick, we can get out of it altogether.”

  “Dream on, Annie will just keep rescheduling it until we go.”

  Chapter 14

  The next morning I was feeling much better, so I decided to check out the damage in the office. I had designed my office to be friendly yet efficient, and it had one large window facing the street. My L-shaped desk faced the door, with bookcases and filing cabinets lining the remaining walls. I stopped dead in the doorway gasping for breath; it looked like a bomb had gone off. The floor was covered in papers, file folders and books.

  I found the petty cash box buried under a pile of invoices; it was open, but the contents hadn’t been touched. They would probably sell the computers out of someone’s trunk, thank goodness for insurance. The SIB had added to the mess by covering everything in a sticky black residue. From what I could see they’d found quite a few fingerprints, but I doubted it would prove anything. We used the office for interviewing our clients and their families, so there were bound to be hundreds of fingerprints. It took another hour—with Annie’s help—to straighten up the mess. I’d be spending the better part of the next day, cleaning the black gunk that clung to the walls.

  My desk was bare, and the slashed embossed leather insert hung off to one side. The attackers must have been searching for something, but I had no idea what it could have been. Looking at the chaos, I found it hard to believe they had only taken the computers. My MacBook held the notes Basil and I had made during our investigation. Could our snooping have caused the attack? Even if it had, it wouldn’t stop me—in fact, it gave me even more incentive to continue. This whole thing was frustrating, someone thought I knew something. I only wish I knew what it was.

  “Guess we’ll have to start over, Basil, all the investigation notes we’d gathered were on my MacBook.”

  Basil pivoted toward me, waving the files he had clasped in his hands. His eyes twinkled with mirth. “Do you really think I’d trust you with those? I made a copy.”

  I nodded at him. He had a talent for working with computers, but I wish he wasn’t so condescending. “You’re a lifesaver,” I said with relief. “You didn’t happen to back up the funeral home stuff, did you?”

  Basil gave me a smug look, “It was a system backup, so yes.”

  “I can’t jump up and give you a hug, so thanks will have to do for now.” I gave him a big grin. “Thanks, Basil.”

  Annie related her view of the events of last night. She had called Harvey Wilder instead of 911, with the intention of alerting the SIB first. They had arrived within fifteen minutes and found the dead guy in front of the basement door. No one mentioned anything about the other two men, the one Basil had caught and the one who had escaped. That was probably a good thing since I thought that the person Basil had caught and released had been Dante.

  “Someone hired those thugs,” Basil stated. “Someone wanted to kill you and destroy all the evidence we had. And they assumed that you had all the information. Which means, they don’t know I’m not just any old parrot. I’m the brains behind this outfit.”

  “So, you’re the boss now are you? Maybe they’ll barbecue you when they find out what you are,” I smirked as he strutted around like Sherlock Holmes. “Anyway, we didn’t have any evidence, all we had was a few names.”

  “We must have made someone nervous. Enough to want you dead,” Basil went on, nodding to himself and ignoring me.

  “Well that’s a short list, we’ve only just started,” I said as I placed a few books back on the shelves. “We talked to Tom Flinders and Francesca Santoro, and Flinders is dead. What possible motive could Francesca have? And who, aside from Harvey, would know we were asking questions?” Dante was off my list, if he’d to kill me he would have done it already.

  “What about Nasty? You told her,” Basil added.

  “I was just trying to get out of dinner with her.”

  “I noticed.” Annie green eyes flashed in disapproval.

  “Yeah and you accepted for us even though you knew we didn’t want to go. That woman gets under my skin, she’s like an itch you can’t scratch. She’s so annoying.”

  Annie ignored us and went back to cleaning the office, throwing files in the cabinets and slamming the books onto the shelves.

  “Francesca Santoro has close ties to the mob, and Felix was working for her,” Basil went on. “She could have put a hit on you—she has the resources.”

  “I didn’t think of that. Do you think she’ll try again? Oh, and I forgot to tell you, Felix was working for the SIB. And Dante’s not a suspect.”

  “Huh…how do you know that?”

  “I’m not completely useless, Basil. Dante turned up at the hospital, he’s some kind of treasure hunter. He told me about Felix, and he knows where we’ve been and who we’ve talked to.”

  Basil leaned toward me with a curious smile on his face. “So, he just turned up out of the blue and told you this. And you believe him?”

  “Yes. If he was the bad guy, he could have killed me while I was sleeping, but he didn’t. He went on a rant about us getting involved in a murder investigation; he actually said we were playing cops and robbers. It was kinda embarrassing, but I believed him.”

  “So, Felix was chasing the soul-stealing rogues. He must have interrupted one and got himself killed.”

  “And Noah must have stumbled on one when he got shot; it makes sense now. When we find out who has the souls, we’ll have the killer.”

  “You left out the attack on yourself. What did we do that drew their attention?”

  “I don’t know. We only have two suspects.”

  Basil nodded his head, “Flinders had Nasty’s phone number and Francesca hired him. One of those two bashed his head in and pushed him down the stairs. We should go talk to Francesca again. Turn the screws.” Basil was beginning to sound like a cop from a gangster movie.

  “No one killed Tom Flinders, he fell down the stairs. Walter said the autopsy confirmed it. As for Francesca, I don’t see the connection to her. Souls have been missing here and in Oregon. There’s only one person who’s been in both places, and that’s Natasha.”

  “Yes! I knew it.” Basil hopped up and down, pumping his fists.

  “But why did she kill Flinders?”

  “His death might be unrelated, just a coincidence.”

  “Could be. Oh, I almost forgot. When Felix was in the basement, I asked him for his password. It’s PBay2005, that should open his tablet, he also mentioned that he knew Natasha.” I thought about what Felix had said in the basement. Our conversation had begun with him smiling and joking, but when he mentioned Natasha, he looked angry. “He was about to tell me something else, but he faded away. I got the impression that he was angry with her, about something she did.”

  “What do you know about her?” Basil inquired, rubbing his hands together.

  “Not a lot about her personally, but I remember the story Uncle Iggy told me years ago. At one time, the West family were members of the council’s upper echelon. A few ge
nerations back, there was a huge scandal involving a daughter who ran off and married a stable boy. I thought the scandal was the most romantic thing I had ever heard, giving up wealth and prestige for love. He burst my bubble when he told me the rest of the story. Apparently, the couple disappeared on the day of the annual ball. The ball was a grand affair, hosted by the Wests, who took every opportunity to lord their wealth over all the reapers. They kept their most valuable jewelry in a security deposit box at the local bank. When they went to the bank to select the pieces for the ball, they found an empty box. By the time they returned, both the daughter and the stable boy had disappeared.”

  “Did they elope?”

  “Let me finish. At first everyone thought someone had kidnapped them, so they waited for the ransom note. It never came, and to make a long story short, the Wests went broke trying to find their daughter and the jewels. All they ever found was a record of the marriage.”

  “So, they’re poor as church mice?” Basil said, rubbing his hands together with glee.

  “Sorry to burst your bubble, but no. Their grandson married an heiress and restored a small portion of the wealth.”

  “I’m gonna search online. If there’s any dirt on Nasty out there, I’ll dig it up,” Basil said as he hopped over to his desk and typed away.

  Basil was determined to find something, anything he could use against her. I agreed with him so we both set to work. I sent emails out to a few trusted acquaintances, hoping for gossip concerning the West family, Natasha in particular. I tried to be discreet—if she found out I was asking questions about her, she’d tell Annie and make my life miserable. While I was waiting for replies, I logged into an ancestry site on the off chance that someone had filled in a family tree. There were a lot of Wests, but none of them were linked to Natasha and it didn’t take long before I got bored. I got off track by searching my own family tree. We had an extensive family that was scattered all over the world. Some of my relatives had the oddest names, such as Renatus, Aloysius, and what would possess someone to name their child Quigley. The poor kid must have suffered constant ribbing—it rhymed with squiggly. Come to think of it, Felix must have been on the receiving end of a lot of bad cat jokes. Then again, he had a strange sense of humor, I could see him starting them himself.