Page 18

CHAPTER 18

W e got the spare key for Melissa’s from Luke, who already had his shop open. He’d been keeping an eye on the funeral home for Betty until she figured out what to do with her inheritance. I didn’t ask him if he’d seen Jackie lately because I have tact and restraint, but it was a near thing.

At the funeral parlor, I unlocked the front door and Max followed me in, which was nice. Usually, going into an unoccupied building that wasn’t Oddities or Ecstasy or the Wok Inn, he made me stand to one side and pulled out his gun. Of course, that would have been helpful when I opened the oven.

Once inside, Max headed for the stairs to the basement, and I followed.

“Did you have one of the Ferrells run a background check on this Quill woman?” Max asked on his way down.

“Her name is Jackie and she’s a doctor, so that’s ‘Dr. Quill’ to you. And no.”

“Don’t you think it’s suspicious she shows up at the same time as an assassin?” He opened the door to the basement.

“Yes.”

He turned to look at me. “But?”

“She’s with her daughter, which doesn’t seem like something a pro would do. She fixed Coral up and didn’t try to kill her. And we need a doctor.”

“I still think Dottie or Lionel should run a check.” Max headed for the far wall, the one with the heavy steel doors with corpses on sliding trays behind them. “What’s the latest with the two of them, by the way? Still at each other’s throats?”

“Lionel’s moved back in with Dottie.” I hung back. I am not a fan of dead bodies, and I’d already spent enough time looking at this one. “Apparently, he appreciated her saving his life and she realized she might miss him if he died. I’m not sure how long it will last, but the mail is getting delivered almost every day.”

“Like Rocky Start is a real town.”

Max checked the tags on the lockers, then opened one and slid the tray out. The woman from yesterday was on it, dressed in the same clothes. I was glad no one had started an autopsy. Not that we had anyone left who could.

Max just stood there, staring at her.

“What?” I asked.

Max pointed at her boots. “It’s weird. Sometimes when I see someone who was killed, my mind goes to the same weird place. I think about the moment they put their boots on. How they laced them up and tied them and had no idea that was the last time they were ever going to do that.”

“Oh. Well, that’s . . . depressing.”

He pulled the coat off the body.

“Are you looking for anything in particular?”

“Yep.”

Max, master communicator.

“I was surprised there was so little blood from the knife,” I said. “Coral was bleeding like a stuck pig from her cuts, but when she stabbed this woman with her own knife, there was pretty much nothing.”

Max pointed at the red mark where the dagger had entered. “Coral’s blade went right into the heart. It stopped pumping immediately. And the knife itself acted like a plug. What we call a clean kill.”

Another new expression I didn’t need to know. I waited as he finished tugging her coat off. Then he pushed up her left sleeve.

“Here,” he said, tapping the inside of the elbow.

I went over and looked. There was a tattoo of a small circle with two lines intersecting inside it at right angles.

“The Cauldron,” Max said.

“Serena’s dead,” I automatically said.

“The Cauldron isn’t,” Max said.

“Junior?”

“Herc told me someone else was in charge now.”

I stared at the dead woman. It was hard for me to believe this had been a living, breathing person forty-eight hours ago, still harder to realize I’d watched her die. She looked so small and vulnerable. And she’d sliced Coral up like she was a ham. So I felt sorry for her and hated her.

I really do not like dead bodies.

Max checked her other arm. There was another tattoo, high up. The head of Medusa, snakes writhing. “Shit.”

“You recognize that?”

He nodded. “I’ve seen it before. It’s an informal thing. People in the Intelligence Support Activity sometimes get it.”

“Is that like the CIA?”

“More secret than the CIA,” Max said. “And it’s stupid to get a tattoo.”

Max didn’t have any tattoos. Ask me how I know. “Why is it dumb to get a tattoo?”

“Dumb in covert ops,” Max amended his statement. “It’s a permanent mark that lets others know something about you. Something you might not want them to know. Like, ‘Hey, I’m serving in a covert unit.’”

“Right. Secrets. So she worked for the government?” Great. That was all we needed, government assassins heading our way.

Max shook his head. “No. She had been with the government. Past tense. She was a player, then she became a dog.”

Max had explained to me how anyone who was a mercenary was called a dog in his world, while those who worked for a government were called players. I guess so I’d know who to avoid, although very few people introduced themselves with “Hi, I’m a dog,” so the information wasn’t that helpful.

I went back to being professional. “Would knowing that help Dottie find out who she was?”

“Nope,” Max said. “ISA people don’t exist. Ex-ISA people don’t exist.”

“She existed,” I said, remembering how offended Jackie had been at Pike’s cold reaction to the body. Her caring had been normal. We probably needed more of that normal in Rocky Start.

Which made me think about what Max had said about regular mail delivery making Rocky Start a real town. It was a real town already. But maybe not a real community. That meeting the day before in Ecstasy had been the first time I’d talked to those women in a group. In fact, aside from Coral and Betty and Lian, the first time I’d talked to them in any depth at all.

Maybe I should work on that. Right after we dealt with our current problems.

Max leaned over, his face just above hers and sniffed. “Geez,” he muttered.

“What?”

“She reeks of alcohol. Even after being down here a day. She was drunk when she went after Coral. Lots of drug and alcohol abuse among players. If it gets too bad, they get killed or end up being a dog. Either way, they usually end up like this.”

He stepped back and stared at the body. The silence stretched out too long.

Alcohol abuse. And Max always refused wine at dinner. “Max?”

“Yeah?”

“Did you go back on the Trail to stay sober?”

He finally shifted his attention from the body. “Not consciously. But, yeah, it scares me a little. I don’t want to drink again.”

“How bad was it when you drank?”

He paused. “When I was operational, I was functional. A lot of binging during down time. Once I stopped taking contracts, retired, it was bad. Herc might be an asshole, but he knew getting me on the Trail would give me an objective and keep me sober.”

“And now you’re here with temptation again.” I moved closer to him. “Listen, I’ll help you.”

He shook his head. “It’s my problem.”

“The hell it is,” I said, and he jerked his head up at my tone. “We’re in this life together. At least I think we are. I know you’re a big loner, but if something comes between us, if it takes you away from me, it’s our problem. Don’t shut me out.”

He met my eyes and then he nodded. “Yeah. Okay. I need to not drink.”

“I’ll help you,” I said.

“Good.” He nodded toward the body. “For now, let’s keep our eyes on the immediate issue. At least we know that there is a connection between the attacks on Coral and on me and possibly the snake in the oven. The Cauldron.”

So we were done talking about the problem. Okay. That was his call. “The snake didn’t have a tattoo,” I said.

Max slid the drawer back in and latched the door. “Let’s get out of here. I’ve got to do something I don’t want to do.”

“What’s that?”

“Call Herc.”

“Ugh,” I said.

“Yep,” Max said, and to my relief, we headed back to Oddities.

Oddities was still a mess, but there were no corpses there so far. I take the wins where I can get them.