Boyfriend from Hell (Saturn's Daughters) (6 page)

As I examined the door, I had the uncomfortable
feeling of being watched, as if I had a target painted in the middle of my back.

I glanced around, but there was no one in sight.

Shrugging off my apprehension, I turned down the alley behind the building. A pretty orange tabby kitten looked up at me expectantly, and I leaned over to scratch its head, grateful for a little normality. “You’re a tailless wonder,” I murmured, admiring his wiry form. “Does that make you a Manx or one of us weirdos?”

He bumped my hand with his head, and I mentally promised him any fish I found inside the Dumpster. Luckily, the bin hadn’t been emptied since yesterday. I swung inside, encountering mostly boxes and papers that people were too lazy to recycle. A few fast-food wrappers didn’t offer anything promising for the kitten.

My deposit bag was a bright blue denim on the outside, not the brown vinyl the bank handed out. The color ought to stand out in this mountain of white and tan. I continued searching. The denim concealed a metal mesh liner supposed to deter the sharpest knife. The zipper had a lock that only I could open. As I said, I’d learned caution with age. If nothing else, I wanted the bag back. I quite liked it.

After flinging a mountain of boxes and trash to the alley, and half a hamburger for the kitten, I spotted blue fabric sliding down a paper avalanche at the back. Snatching a corner before it vanished, I retrieved the bag and examined it for knife slashes—but it was the lock that had been broken.

Swearing, I climbed out of the bin and sat on the curb to examine the zipper. Still feeling as if I was being watched, I shuddered as unease crawled up my spine. Not liking creepy men or Leibowitz staring at me was one thing, but being fearful of nothing was not a good sign of mental stability.

I glanced around to be certain I was still alone and tried to shake off the silliness. Max really had done a number on me if I started feeling afraid all the time.

The kitten rubbed my ankle and purred, but my mind was otherwise occupied while I studied my portable fortress. Except for the lock, the bag looked intact.

Not expecting to find anything, I checked the contents.
Only the cash was gone
. The large check from the detective agency and all the smaller ones were still there. So it was still an amateur thief, if he couldn’t cash the checks. Good to know.

Succumbing to another uneasy feeling, I glanced around again.

Was that a shadow on the other end of the alley? Still too jumpy after yesterday, I fled for Bill’s Biker Bar and Grill, deposit bag in my hot hand.

B
ill was big and burly, with an unruly haystack of fading ginger hair and usually a three-day beard. I’m not sure how guys manage to always have stubble, and I wasn’t going to ask. I was jittery and needed security, and Bill was it. I’d seen him heave a two-hundred-pound trucker through a plate-glass window, just like John Wayne in the movies. He was strong.

He was polishing the bar and looked up in surprise when I burst in, since he never saw me down here on weekends.

My fear must have been obvious, because he strode out from behind the bar and checked down the street as I landed on one of his stools, gasping for breath and from the pain in my hip. The sidewalk down the block had suddenly taken a notion to turn to green mud, and I’d nearly broken my neck sliding through it. Usually the Zone was kinder to me. I was ridiculously grateful to have Bill at my back.

“No one out there,” he reported, ambling back to the bar and pulling out a diet Sprite, my drink of choice.

“There was no one there when this got stolen, either.” I slapped the bag down on the bar and gratefully accepted the icy soda. I wasn’t particularly coherent, but Bill frowned and nodded as if he understood.

“It’s been happening here and about,” he agreed. “I lost all my hundreds one night when there was no one here but me, so I keep the cash drawer locked now. Andre gets antsy when things like that happen.”

I stared. “You’re saying ghosts are stealing cash?”

He shrugged and began hanging beer mugs in the overhead rack. “I’m just saying you have to watch your back down here. Don’t knock invisible just because you can’t see it.”

I pulled the contents of the bag out and slapped the checks on the bar. “Then I want a bodyguard from now on when I go to the bank. And tell Andre if he files the insurance claim for Friday’s entire tally sheet and he wants to commit theft by depositing these later, he’d better figure out how to do it, because I won’t.”

He nodded sagely. “You gotta be honest in your business. He gets that. Sorry to hear about your fella. Let us know when the funeral is.”

Anguish ripped another hole in my heart. I needed to check with the good detective to see what happened with bodies after autopsies. Even if I ought to hate the bastard, I didn’t want Max going unclaimed. And I
really
didn’t want to think about Max as a corpse. Maybe that was why I thought I’d seen his face earlier. I wanted him to come back. To not be gone. My rattled mind had simply conjured his image.

I was afraid to go out on the street again, which meant I had to leave immediately and get over myself. Finishing my drink, waiting until it was almost time for the next bus, I waved at Bill and sauntered out as if I hadn’t just run from shadows like a jackrabbit.

The tailless kitten was waiting right outside the door. Big yellow eyes and a pleading
mew
broke my already broken heart. “My bodyguard,” I told him, picking him up and tucking him into my messenger bag. He promptly burrowed down and went to sleep, and I was glad to be able to give someone, something, the feeling of safety that I had just gained from Bill.

I wasn’t much used to people looking out for me. With my track record, I decided I probably shouldn’t get too comfortable with it, either.

• • •

I made it home without further incident. Even the green mud had disappeared, replaced by new gray cement with a footprint in it that could have been mine.

Once I reached the tenements, I walked around the block, checking all the alleys for news vans first. I didn’t like the looks of the leather-clad stranger lurking near the front step, so I eluded him by going in the back, by the garbage cans. Reporters ought to be made to wear
PRESS
signs on their hats like in the old cartoons. And if that was one of Max’s biker buddies, I didn’t want to know about it. They might kill me if they blamed me for his death.

I paid one of the kids playing in the lobby to go up and see if there was anyone near my door. Once assured the coast was clear, I fell into my apartment with a sense of relief, locking up behind me. I’d had enough of the world today. Life was easier when I slipped past everyone’s radar.

My new furry pal tumbled out and began exploring. I didn’t know why I thought I could keep a kitten. I was woefully unprepared. I apparently needed to be needed. Or wanted company so I didn’t have to think too deeply.

I had a hundred and one errands to run, plus new-kitty duty—like acquiring cat food and litter box—not to mention finals to study for.

Instead of attending to any of that, I picked up Schwartz’s business card and dialed his number. I left a message asking when Max’s body would be released. I tried to sound very professional and business-like. I broke down and cried when I hung up. Kitty leaped onto my lap, arched his back, and stroked under my chin.

I knew I had to be stronger than this, but knowing
and doing were two different things. I’d been pushed to my limits these last twenty-four hours, and the strain was showing.

I couldn’t face the world with tear streaks down my cheeks. I scratched the kitten behind its ears. “You need a name, fella. You don’t look much like a Kitty.”

He purred approvingly and kneaded the sofa cushion, then swatted a pillow to the floor. That was a pretty strong stroke for a bitty kitty.

“Pillow?” I suggested. “Billow?” I think he snarled at me. I didn’t blame him. “Milo?”

His head bobbed before he curled into a ball and settled down to the business of sleeping. Milo he was.

Determined to keep moving forward, I dragged out the little netbook I’d bought refurbished for next to nothing on Craigslist. If my mother had taught me nothing else in our years of wandering, it was how to live cheaply and how to avoid personal contact through use of the Internet.

Putting on my reading glasses, I checked e-mail and found a few electronic sympathy cards from several of the offices I worked with. I’d only lived here two years and had been with Max for only six months, so we didn’t have a lot of mutual friends. I’d met his biker pals, but I didn’t know how to get in touch with them short of driving to their hangout. With me going to school and working, Max and I had barely had time for ourselves.

With no small degree of trepidation, I opened my Facebook page.

Some jackass had posted video of the fiery crash.
Who in hell had been there to film the fireball and thought it cool to show me? My invisible thief? That gave me cold shudders. I couldn’t watch it. I left a message saying I was home and coping and deleted the video.

Before I signed out, an instant message arrived from Themis Astrology and Tarot. Weird. I hate letting people know when I’m online, so I always had my IM turned off. Probably some kind of computer burp. I scanned the odd message. Could IMs be sent in cerulean blue with birds twittering in the corner? It wasn’t as if I was any expert. . . .

Your Saturn transit is almost complete and the asteroids are in position. Conga-rats, newest daughter. Use your talent more wisely next time.

My talent? Was this some sick reference to Max’s death? Appalled at the thought, I deleted the message and ran a search-and-destroy mission on “Themis” in my address book, but nothing called anything similar was there. Maybe the message wasn’t even meant for me. I really didn’t need to add paranoia to my growing list of neuroses, but I was beginning to feel hunted. I slammed the machine shut.

The possibility of a grocery and Laundromat run popped into my head, but my energy wasn’t there. Saving it for the next day, I went into the bedroom for my law books—forgetting I’d left them on the dresser.

The instant I brushed against the mirror to pick up
the books, a flare of fire appeared that I could have sworn looked like a scared and furious Max.

The room spun. I clung to the peeling veneer of the dresser, refusing to pass out, forcing myself to look. Shadowed eyes resembled deep dark pits of despair, without their usual laughing cynicism.

In my hallucination, I could have sworn I heard him shouting, “
I didn’t do it, Justy!
”

N
eedless to say, I didn’t get much done all weekend. I freaked out and took the Miata and Milo to a pet store and spent my paycheck on cat supplies. I contemplated moving out of my newly haunted apartment.

I don’t know a whole lot about love, so I couldn’t say if I’d loved Max while he was alive, but I certainly didn’t love the idea of his ghost throwing accusations at me from my mirrors. But moving would have cost more money and time than I could
conjure up and might not solve the problem if it was in my head.

On Sunday evening, Detective Schwartz finally returned my call to let me know that no drugs or alcohol had been found in what remained of Max. Max liked his beer and a joint at a party, but he wasn’t into heavy stuff, so that told me nothing new.

“What do I do now?” I asked, sitting in a park and watching Milo pounce on a cricket while we talked. “I don’t think he had life insurance for a funeral.”

“His next of kin have already been notified. The funeral home will take care of everything for the family,” he said reassuringly.

I wasn’t reassured.
His family?
What family? The one he’d told me he didn’t have? He’d said he was estranged from his parents, like me. I’d thought we were alone together.

Max had lied
. My big bad biker boy had lied. Big surprise.

Maybe I should go back and confront the bastard in my mirror.
Since I obviously knew nothing about him, maybe Max was actually a serial killer, and I’d fouled up his plans by not dying.