Grave Reservations by Cherie Priest

12.

Grady dropped Leda off at her office door, gave her a wave, and disappeared back into traffic. As soon as he was out of sight, she wandered around the corner to get some coffee. She didn’t really want to sit down and work. In fact, she didn’t have any work to sit down and do. She hadn’t sprung for the Google keyword ads yet, or the Facebook ads, or even the Craigslist ads for Foley’s Far-Fetched Flights of Fancy, even though they were all queued up and ready to go. It seemed like a waste to run them this late in the afternoon. It did not seem like a waste to go visit more suspects, but she’d made a deal with Grady when it came to investigative work—none without him, period—and she had to respect that deal. For now.

She really wanted to get back to her murder board, but it was kind of early for that.

Wasn’t it?

She checked her phone. Well, it was almost four o’clock. The doors at Castaways opened at four, in case of a happy-hour crowd. By the time she could get there, it’d be closer to four thirty. It wouldn’t be super weird if she showed up so early.

Would it?

While she stood against a wall and waited for a barista to hurry up with that pour-over already, she texted Niki. Where you at?

A minute later, she got a response. With Matt, getting early dinner. You lost?

Not lost. Just wondering when you’d be at Castaways.

Another hour or two? Tiff’s there. So’s Ben. They’re opening tonight.

Okay,Leda typed. I’ll see you there later.

Her coffee finally arrived, approximately a hundred years after she’d ordered it. It was good and hot, though, and it smelled like it’d been roasted sometime in the last week, which was nice. She took the to-go cup and went back outside, where it had begun to drizzle.

“Screw it,” she declared to the world at large. “I’m going to the bar.”

She’d parked Jason around the corner from her office, on a side street where the free parking was only for parkers who needed two hours at a time, not that it ever stopped anyone. Almost nobody ever got a ticket, and Leda had been lucky this time, too. She climbed inside, stuffed the coffee into the cup holder, and headed north into the city, then up Cap Hill—where parking was considerably trickier, even when someone knew all the tricks.

By 4:42, she’d finally found a place to leave the car and sauntered inside.

She shoved the door open and whipped off her sunglasses. “I’ve arrived,” she announced. “Let the games begin!” The door shut behind her. She blinked until her eyes adjusted to the lower light. “Anyone? Are there any games to be had? Anywhere?”

“Hark! Who goes there?” called someone from behind the stage.

“It’s me!” she called back.

Benjamin Kane popped his head out from between the black stage curtains and beamed like an angel. “Be thou Leda? That’s a fair name. I’ll have no psychic, if you be not she!”

“What’s that, Shakespeare or something?”

“Or something!”

Ben was a sharp, gay Asian man in his fifties. In another ten years, he’d be a silver fox. For now, his thick dark hair had only two streaks of silver—streaks that contrasted nicely with whatever black velvet outfit he was wearing at the time, unless it was summer. Then it was black linen all the way.

It was Leda’s opinion that he always looked a little like a friendly vampire, but she never said so out loud. She didn’t know him well enough to know if the comparison would offend or delight him. Sometimes he could be a tad fussy, and although Matt managed most of the day-to-day operations, Castaways belonged to Ben. She didn’t want to piss him off.

“You’re here early,” he noted.

“I try not to make a habit of it, but what can I say? I found myself at loose ends.”

He climbed out onto the stage and then hopped down off it. He wended his way between the tables and clutched her in a big, crisp hug. “We’re always happy to have you, of course. Will you do a set tonight?”

“I haven’t decided.”

“Yes, you have, you just haven’t committed,” he argued. “But that’s fine for now. You do know that Matt and Niki aren’t here yet, right?”

She nodded and stepped back out of the hug. “Yeah, I know.”

“Leda!” Tiffany shrieked. She bounced out from the employee entrance beside the edge of the bar, smelling like cigarette smoke and cheap pizza from down the street. She delivered Leda’s second hug of the last ninety seconds, and immediately asked, “Do you want a drink?”

“No. I don’t know yet. Okay, yes, but I don’t want to impose.”

Ben waved his hand like he was swatting an errant wasp. “Oh, honey, we had our highest-ticket night ever last time you did your little song-and-dance routine. For God’s sake, Tiffany. Make the woman whatever she asks for.”

Leda scratched at the back of her neck and laughed awkwardly. “It’s more like a sit-and-sing routine, really. But thanks, Ben. You’re the best.”

“Nonsense! Another night or two like the last one, and I’ll start booking you outright. I can’t pay you much, but I can pay you enough to show up and show off.”

Tiffany whacked him on the arm as she walked to the bar. “You’re the show-off, Ben.”

He made a coy face and shrugged. “Anyway. I’ll haul out the karaoke getup, and you have a little gin fizzy or whatever floats your boat. Once the evening crowd rolls in, you can do your thing. But from here on out,” he said more sternly, “you need to give me a heads-up. Or give Matt a heads-up, whoever’s around. I want to start advertising your psychic songstress nights.”

“We’ve been calling it klairvoyant karaoke.”

He frowned, his perfect eyebrows dipping toward the bridge of his nose. “I don’t get it.”

“Like… clairvoyant but with a k you know?”

“Ah.” He nodded. “Like a Kardashian thing.”

“What? No, it’s just—”

“Yes, it is,” he protested. “I get it now. It might be hard to fit on a flyer…” he said, mostly to himself as he walked away. “Psychic songstress works better, if you ask me, and it has such a pleasant assonance to it. We’ll see. I’ll play it by ear, when I get back to my computer.”

“But…” Leda began to protest, but he was already behind the stage again. Tiffany was calling up something that required some martini-shaker stylings, so she said her thoughts out loud to the bartender instead: “If you spell psychic without the p it looks weird.”

Tiffany worked the stainless-steel shaker like a pro, bobbing her head to the rattling mixture of ice, booze, and whatever else she was whipping up. “Oh, I’m with you. Klairvoyant karaoke is the hands-down winner in my book, but he’s the boss. And I think he doesn’t want to… he’s not going to take off the p. He wants to add one. To songstress.”

“He’s not my boss. And that looks ridiculous in my head. I’m sure it looks ridiculous on paper, too.”

Tiffany stopped agitating the beverage and strained it into a martini glass. “Until you find someplace else to do your thing, I mean, it is his bar.”

“Yeah, I know. And he seems like good people.” Leda pulled up a barstool and parked on it. “I’m not mad. I just really like the KK thing. Oh, wait. One more K and we’ve got a problem, don’t we?”

“So, don’t add any racist jokes to the mix, and you won’t have anything to worry about.”

“Very funny. Very funny indeed.”

“Racist jokes are never funny!” Tiffany slapped down a cocktail napkin and put the glass on top of it. “Now try this. See if it doesn’t perk up your day.”

“What’s in it?”

“Try it first.”

Leda squinted at the glass. Its contents were yellowish, with light bubbles and an orange peel curlicue garnish. It did not look especially dangerous, but that didn’t mean anything where Tiffany was concerned. That girl could pack twelve ounces of fire into a shot glass and call it lemonade, right to your face without cracking a grin.

“Will it hurt?” Leda asked, poking the glass with her index finger and taking away a fingerprint’s worth of condensation.

“No?”

“Well, that’s good enough for me.” Leda picked up the glass and didn’t bother to sniff it. She tipped it up, took a healthy swallow, and set it back down again with a hard stare, as if she meant to interrogate it. “Tiffany, I’m asking you seriously, and I want you to tell me the truth: What’s in this?”

“What does it taste like?”

“Like death by bananas, with a hint of eau de sunscreen.”

“That’s the coconut liqueur,” she said. “I’m trying to make something that tastes tropical but isn’t just the same old mai tai or piña colada you can get any-damn-where. I skipped the orange juice and rum, because that’s too obvious. How would you feel about an orange-blossom infusion? That might give it a good bouquet.”

“You just said you were skipping orange juice.”

“No, I mean like a vodka infusion with orange blossoms. They don’t smell like oranges, they smell like… like flowers. I don’t know. I’m still working on the formula. But did you like it, that’s my question?”

Leda took another sip. “Tone down the banana liqueur, and you might have a winner. Or cut it with something stronger than the coconut? I don’t know, but I’m down to be your guinea pig while you work it out.”

“Excellent! But yeah, banana is a hard flavor to work with. It overpowers whatever you put it in. Hmm…” Tiffany wandered back to stare at her assortment of booze, stacked up from waist height to the ceiling. “I’ll keep experimenting. But until then, I might put it on the menu anyway. And I’m stealing your ‘death by bananas’ bit.”

“Have at.”

Tiffany picked up a piece of chalk and started to write it down as the daily special. “At least this way, people will know what they’re in for—and the banana haters can try something else.”

“Right. Good call. Hey, I’m going to take my monkey juice and head back to Matt’s office, okay? Tell Ben, if he comes looking for me.”

“Spending a little time with the murder board?”

“Since it’s dead in here and all. No pun intended.” The words flew out of her mouth before she could stop them. She looked away to hide a wince and took a deep sniff of the banana-y beverage.

“I’ll holler if the crowd picks up, but on a Monday… you know. It’s not really going to be hopping.”

“Thanks. Hey, let me ask you…” Leda said quietly. “Does Ben know about the murder board?”

“He might not? Matt flipped the board over, so the bar’s work schedule faces out.”

“Okay, thanks. I just don’t want to upset him with my creepy-ass hobby.” Leda swept her glass into her hands and collected the napkin right along with it. After the third sip, the bananas weren’t quite so overwhelming. They even became quite pleasant. Unless that was the liqueur talking.

It might’ve been the liqueur. Without it, she might actually have to consider that this wasn’t a hobby but a wholly unpleasant obsession. But what could she do?

Drink. That’s what. Drink, and stare bleary-eyed at her murder board.

She carried her drink around the tables and back past the audio/video booth beside the stage, then down the corridor behind the curtain. Ben was sitting at his desk in his office. She waved when she walked past.

“Hey, are you headed to Matt’s office?” he asked innocently. “The one that used to be the hall closet?”

Too innocently.

Her eyes narrowed. “Yes. Why?”

“No reason. Have fun in there, with your oddball extracurricular activity.”

She sighed. “You know about the murder board.”

“I was looking for Matt’s extra keys. I lost mine the other day. It’s quite a… project you’ve got there. Very casualty chic.”

“Do you hate it?” she asked, her voice high and tight. “I can put it somewhere else or take it home if it bothers you.”

He shook his head. “Nobody goes back there except for me and Matt every now and again. Is it weird? Totally. Do I care? Not at all. I do have a question, though.”

“Shoot.”

“Why don’t you keep it at your house? Or at your own office?”

Another blast of bananas on the tongue, and she was cleared for takeoff. “Because… okay, because my travel agency office is about the size of a powder room, and there’s nowhere to keep it out of sight without blocking the window or the door. If I had it at home…” She hesitated. “Look, to tell you the God’s honest truth? If I worked on it at home, I would think about it one hundred percent of the time, and I would get crazy and weird and overly focused on it, and that would be bad for everybody.”

“More crazy and weird than you already are, you mean?”

“Yes. That’s what I mean. I’m sorry, Ben. I didn’t mean to involve your marvelous bar in my ridiculous quest for justice.” It was a slight struggle to keep her tone light. Would it ever feel okay to speak so thoughtlessly of what had happened to Tod? Maybe, with time. It hadn’t been so long, in the scheme of things.

Ben nodded in a sympathetic, even fatherly fashion. “No, darling. It’s not ridiculous, and don’t you ever apologize. You’re adding to the mystique of your brand, that’s how I’m choosing to see it—and otherwise I’m working hard to mind my own business, fascinating though all this is. Go on, do whatever you need. Maybe in another hour or two, you could…?” he hinted hard.

“In another hour or two, I’ll come out and do my sit-and-sing routine, yes.”

He clapped happily, perhaps delighted for the change in subject. “Excellent! Do you want to see the flyer I’m working up?”

“I’m morbidly curious, sure.” She walked around behind his desk to stand beside him. The flyer on his screen was neon pink with a stock-art crystal ball and black letters with black blood dripping down them. The letters read PSYCHIC PSONGSTRESS.

All she could say was “Wow.” A missing p had sounded absurd. Tiffany was right, though, and the extra p was even worse.

“I know, right?” He smiled from ear to ear. “Can I put you down for six o’clock?”

She glanced at the clock on his wall. “Let’s say six thirty. I want to take a minute, okay?”

“Okay,” he agreed, then added the information to the flyer. “I don’t know how many people will see it, but we need to grow your brand, right? Let’s grow your brand. I’ll help.”

“I’m supposed to be doing that with the travel agency,” Leda complained. “Not my weirdo singing career.”

“You can do that, too. Make yourself some business cards, and we’ll put them in a bowl by the door. But tonight, I’m sticking these up on every post on the block. Across the street, too. You know, people come in here all the time asking if you’ll be up onstage.”

“Business cards? Actually, that’s a great idea—I’ll get on that.” Suddenly, she was mortified that she hadn’t thought of business cards sooner. “I’ll just be…”

“Down the hall. Gotcha. And take that drink with you, will you? I hate bananas. The smell makes me gag.”

She saluted him with the now half-empty drink and set off down the short, narrow corridor that ran behind the stage until it hit the exterior wall and ended at an exit. (DO NOT OPEN EXCEPT IN CASE OF EMERGENCY read the red-and-white security bar mounted across it.) She stopped right before that door and opened the one to its right.

This was Matt’s office, though he didn’t use it much. Sometimes he tallied up the till in there, but usually he did so in Ben’s office—since Ben had the good calculator and his computer was the one with the payroll software. Matt’s office was Matt’s office because it was a largely empty room that was otherwise used for storage, and Matt had wanted an office.

It worked out well for Leda, because like she’d told Ben, she didn’t want to keep the murder board at home. The board was a midsize model that fit on the large easel in the corner. The easel was left over from Niki’s last run at an art degree, and Leda had supplied her own note cards and magnets to hold everything in place. This meant that even the more gruesome details were held up by adorable novelty magnets, picked up on Leda’s travels—or at her favorite coffee shops, or the neat old florist at the end of the block, or a gas station in Ballard.

The whiteboard was presently turned to the wall. The backside was plain brown corkboard, completely nondescript and perfectly uninteresting. The employee schedules had been printed out and affixed with brass thumbtacks.

But when Leda turned it around, the murder board was revealed in all its terrible, sloppy glory. The very sight of it gave her a weird, sad little pang—but also a gentle lift of hope.

She’d picked up a pack of one hundred index cards in assorted neon colors, and in the beginning, she’d had plans to color-coordinate the information. Those intentions evaporated fairly quickly, as she realized how little she knew and understood.

At the top of the board in royal highlighter yellow, she’d written: TOD SANDOVAL, 30 years of age, RIP.

Below that, on the far left: a tree of newspaper clippings, starting with one that declared him missing. Then another, from several days later: his car was found in a culvert, over on the east side of the city. And the next day: “Body Found in Sunken Car Believed to Be Missing Columbia City Man.” That one was held up by a magnet that advertised the possibility of bigfoot sightings in Olympic National Park. The next one was from three days later, announcing that a second body had been found and the police were not prepared to state for the record that the new body was connected to Tod’s in any way.

She’d left out Tod’s obituary. She couldn’t stand to look at it, and it wasn’t like the little paragraph of smudged newsprint offered any additional information about his death.

In the next column, on index cards so bright they made her squint, she’d listed Things We Know About Amanda Crombie, 27 years of age, RIP.

The top card read: Killed with the same gun that killed Tod, probably around the same time. Body was discovered later. She wasn’t in the car when it went into the water.

The next cards read, in descending order: An accountant with a small firm called Probable Outcomes. PO was an advertising group(?) that went under a year after she died.

No known enemies. Survived by parents, two brothers, and a cat.^*(^*Parents adopted the cat.)

Might have met Tod at a gas station a couple of miles away.

Leda had argued with herself over where to put that last card, since it applied to Tod as much as it applied to Amanda—but Tod’s row was getting full, so she’d stuck it down under Amanda’s name.

Video surveillance at the time showed that Tod had stopped at a BP station for gas that night, about ten minutes after a woman matching Amanda’s description had been hanging around it. The cashier wouldn’t swear that she was the woman he’d seen, and the footage from security cameras was so grainy as to be nearly useless… but he thought the mystery lady had been hiding from someone. She’d never come inside to ask for help, and she was never positively identified.

Leda would have bet her life that the woman at the gas station was Amanda Crombie. It might have been her psychic senses tingling, or it might’ve been the coincidence, or it might’ve been a blind grasp at narrative straws. But she believed it all the way down to her bones.

Next column: Things That Don’t Make Sense.

She read from the top down.

Why was Tod in the back seat of his own car when he was found?Police insisted that he hadn’t somehow floated back there when the car sank; he seemed to have bled out there. The killer either shot him there or tossed him inside before he’d run the car into the water.

“He?” she second-guessed herself out loud. “Or she, I guess.” She took a pen and added a question mark to the pronoun.

“Any idiot can fire a gun. No reason it had to be a dude,” she muttered.

Next card.

Did Tod know Amanda from somewhere?She’d never heard him mention her, but that didn’t mean they weren’t acquaintances. She could’ve been someone he recognized from his usual bus route, or from a restaurant he frequented, or any of a thousand places he went without Leda along for the ride.

Next card.

Everybody loved Tod, and nobody wanted to kill him.

She sat on the edge of Matt’s desk and scowled at that last card through eyes that were getting damp. She stared at it, long and hard. Every letter written thereupon was absolutely true, but someone had killed him anyway, and one way or another, Leda was going to find out who. Now that she had the interest of a real-life detective, she was flush with optimism and renewed determination. She was going to do it with Grady Merritt’s help, or without it. He had the badge, but she had the psychic powers.

Right?

She downed the last of her death by bananas and went to the ladies’ room to freshen up.

“One thing at a time,” she told herself. “First we sing. Then we use our powers for more than mere good. We use them for justice.”