Grave Reservations by Cherie Priest
23.
Leda did not swing by the office on the way home. She didn’t have the energy, despite the sixteen ounces of coffee she’d dumped down her throat. She felt exactly like she ought to, considering she’d been dragged out of bed far too early, then hauled to a crime scene—where she’d subsequently fondled a corpse in hopes of a psychic episode. If you asked her, the episode in question had been one of her worst and least helpful. Contrary to Grady’s insistence, she didn’t feel like any of it had meant a damn thing. It was all stuff he could’ve guessed, and stuff that would come out in a careful police investigation anyway.
That was the worst part.
It’d hit her hard, once they’d made it back to the car and she’d given him the short version of what she’d seen. It’d been brutal and weird, and largely meaningless. What did they know, before she came along? They knew that someone had murdered Janette after a struggle. What did they know, after she’d done her thing? That someone had manslaughtered Janette after a struggle.
All she’d done was narrow the gender down to “a dude, definitely,” and they were already leaning that way in the first place. It was the weakest of all possible clues.
Truly, she was the most inconsequential of psychics. A Cassandra doomed to know gnarly details about the truth—but only if they’re no good to anybody, anywhere, at all. Ever.
Except for the one time she kept a cop off a plane.
She felt sorry for herself while she hunted for the eyeliner she wanted, and she marinated in self-pity as she smoothed her hair into a ponytail. She wallowed in woe as she hunted for a better shirt and some different boots, since the first pair she’d worn that day were wet from the early-morning outing in the damp Seattle dawn. Upon noticing that her socks didn’t match, she removed her boots and found a set that went together. No one would see them, but she would know, and it would drive her crazy if she didn’t fix it.
All in all, she’d rather go back to bed than do anything else.
But now it was after 8:00 a.m., and the rest of the world was up and running. She should at least show up at her office and check her emails. After all, technically she had a job. Technically, she was a small-business owner.
Dragging her feet all the way, she walked into the office. It still wasn’t raining, and she’d thought the fresh air might perk her up.
She’d thought wrong. She kind of wanted to die.
Instead, she unlocked her office and sat down at her desk. She powered up the computer and, lo and behold, she had emails! From people who wanted to go places! Encouraged by happy adrenaline, she sat up straighter and began typing professional-sounding words that might persuade folks to hire her. Within an hour, she definitely had one new client—and probably a second client, too.
Well, after a morning like the one she’d had, there was nowhere to go but up.
Right?
A third email landed. Her Google and Facebook ads must be working! It wasn’t enough to float the business, but it was a good sign. She needed a good sign. As she sent off the requested information and double-checked her email signature, she honestly felt like maybe the day would brighten up after all. If she could hit some perfect threshold of happy customers, word of mouth would pick up, and that would help grow the business. Things were coming up roses all over.
By lunchtime, Leda was thinking about taking a break. Maybe she’d knock off, head home, and take that nap after all. Honestly, she deserved that break.
Also, maybe she deserved sushi.
She hadn’t heard from Niki since the night before, so she shot her a text asking if she was free for lunch. It’d been like, eighteen hours. There was so much to catch up on! Niki was probably just lounging around her apartment anyway; and if she agreed to drive all the way out to the south end for sushi at their favorite place… then she could probably be persuaded to goof off until the evening, when they could head over to Castaways together.
Niki didn’t bother to text back. She called instead. “Hey, I was just thinking about you.”
“Of course you were. I’m awesome.”
“You sound… tired,” she observed carefully.
Leda sighed. “Only because you know me so well. It’s been a hell of a morning already—I’ll tell you all about it when I see you. Will I see you for lunch? Can you come down here and keep me company? I’ll buy you sushi. You like sushi.”
“Not as much as you do, and you know I love you—but I’ve got to skip it.”
“What?”
Niki said, “Another doctor’s appointment. I’m sitting in the waiting room right now.”
“Oh God, get off the phone. Don’t be the guy who talks in a quiet room full of sick people who just want to be left in peace. Everyone hates that guy.”
“Yeah, but I’m the only guy here, so I don’t care. I might be getting my boot off. At the very least, I’m getting a lighter one.”
“Already?” Leda asked.
“It’s been weeks. ‘Already’ can’t come soon enough. I’m ready to have some mobility back. But hey, while I’ve got you here,” she said. “Are you coming to Castaways tonight?”
“I’m pretty wiped out, but I’m thinking about it. Why? Did Ben want to print up posters?”
“Oh, he will, sure. But that’s not why I’m asking. Ben wants to start doing theme nights. Since you can’t do a show on command every night of the week.”
“Theme nights?” Leda asked. “Like… tiki night? Goth night? Furry night?”
“Those sound amazing, yes. I’ll write down those ideas for him. He’ll be thrilled. Tiffany will whip up some themed drinks, employees will dress up, and patrons will be encouraged to do likewise.”
“How?”
Niki said, “Not sure yet, but Tiffany had a good idea. Like, we get Steve to hand out tickets to people in costumes—and they get two bucks off a drink after happy hour. Something like that.”
“I like it. But what does this have to do with me? Do you want to do a couple’s costume and Matt says no? You know I’ll dress up with you, baby. Any day of the week.”
“It’s like you read my mind. Say, hypothetically, that Ben’s first theme night is 1950s kitsch…”
Leda screeched, “Lucy and Ethel!”
Niki cackled. “Damn right! Do you know where those costumes are? Where did you put them?”
Leda hesitated, her glee snagging on the memory of where she’d last seen the dresses and wigs. “They’re in the storage unit downtown.”
Her friend was quiet for a few seconds. “The Ricky and Fred costumes are there, too, I guess.”
“Yeah, it’s all mixed up with Tod’s stuff. It’s okay, though. It’s time. Those costumes are too damn cool to be stuffed in a box over mere grief, don’t you think?” Leda tried to sound more lighthearted than she felt. “You and me, we’re going to kill it at the first ever Castaways theme night. I’ll bring the Fred and Ricky costumes, too. In case Matt wants to be Ricky again.”
More silence, then Niki said, “I’m not sure what to say right here, you know what I mean? Nobody ever wore the Fred costume, so it’s not like it was really Tod’s. But it feels like it was. The only person I can think of, is maybe Grady—but that’s not the kind of working relationship you two have, I don’t think.”
“Correct.”
“Right. So. Me and you will be Lucy and Ethel. I’ll give Matt the Ricky costume, and you can just… hang on to the Fred costume, or whatever makes you happy. Maybe you’ll find your Fred someday, and we’ll have a big I Love Lucy party, and it’ll be a whole new chapter for you.”
“Maybe.”
“Leda? Hon? You okay? I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to turn this into something weird. I’m really sorry.”
“No, it’s okay. Not your fault, and I’d be happy to bust out the Lucy and Ethel garb. I was going to knock off soon anyway, so I’ll run by the storage unit this afternoon and dig up all that stuff. I’ll bring it with me, and see you tonight.”
“Are you sure it’s okay?”
“You heard me, I’m good. I’ll come around at the tail end of happy hour. Tell Ben I’m in, and he can call me whatever he wants on the posters.”
“He already does.” Niki paused. She held the phone against some nearby part of her body while she listened to someone say something. She came back and said, “All right, but I have to go now. The doc’s calling me back to the exam room. Take care of yourself, please? And if you decide you don’t want to do this, that’s fine. I promise, nobody will be mad about it.”
“I’ll be there tonight, costumes in hand. Go get your boot off, so we can dance.”
They hung up, and Leda sat alone at her desk, staring at her computer monitor and not seeing any new messages—good, bad, or otherwise.
She powered it down and collected herself. She took a deep breath and grabbed her purse. Food, that’s what she needed. Food and then storage unit and costumes and Castaways. She slung the bag over her shoulder and rose to her feet. This was fine. Everything was fine. She hadn’t had literally the worst morning in the history of mornings, and tonight there would be free booze. She could do this.
She could do this.
First, she went back home and got her car. She didn’t need Jason for sushi, because the sushi bar was around the corner from her office—but if Niki wasn’t coming along, too, sushi was somehow less appealing. Nah, she’d go pick up a burrito she could bring along for the ride. Something to distract her while she went plowing through a small locked room full of heartache.
She found a Chipotle on the way, got a burrito the size of a newborn, and took it (along with a large, caffeine-loaded soda) to go.
Back to the old Tully’s roasting facility she went, wending through the industrial end of the city to get there—because it was easier than hopping on the interstate, where it’d take twenty minutes to go two exits. Might as well use the twenty minutes to see the sights, honk in support of some protestors, give five bucks to a dude holding a sign at a stoplight, and not get run off the road by midday commuters running late or just plain running.
Under the streets was a forest of concrete with a canopy of asphalt high overhead. Leda found a place to park, and it should have felt perilous—it was right underneath an on-ramp—but instead it felt lucky, because it was only half a block away from her destination and it was in a two-hour free-parking zone. It was like she’d found a unicorn and left her car on top of it.
If she’d been more awake and less depressed, she might have been in a good mood. She always liked to think of her parking luck as a daily omen, and this was a good one.
But no.
She was grumpy and antsy, and a little bit shaky from too much caffeine and not enough food or sleep and maybe a weird psychic hangover from the dead lady in the bright building. But she’d fix the food part once she got to the unit.
Inside the big old building with cars whizzing past it, she went to the storage unit she’d been keeping since before Tod had died.
She’d first rented it a month after they’d gotten engaged. They’d planned to combine households—and even though those households belonged to a couple of single, job-hopping, broke-ass millennials, there’d still been so much stuff that would have to go someplace. It was supposed to be a temporary measure until they could get their own place, but then Tod had died, and they’d never moved in together. Then she’d moved into the bungalow with somehow less room than her old apartment, and even more of her things got crammed into the dark little place. Now it was a labyrinth of boxes, bags, and loose furniture piled like King Tut’s tomb up in there.
Tod’s parents had taken most of his things, but she’d kept a few, and plenty of her own possessions had reminded her of him. The rest was a mausoleum of things that she didn’t always want to touch but couldn’t bear to part with.
Too many little flashes, sparkling through her brain like TV static and fireworks. Little memories, playing out again and again. It had nothing to do with psychic powers and everything to do with nostalgia.
She flipped on the light and shut the door behind herself. One of her mother’s old dining room chairs was pushed against the wall. She sat down in it and pulled a full, flat box of books over to use as a table, and she started on the burrito in earnest.
A burrito was exactly the right thing to eat alone, in a small storage unit that was more dark than bright, even with a light bulb swaying overhead. Nobody wants anybody to see them wrestling a burrito. It’s not dignified. It’s slivers of onion and scraps of carnitas falling on the floor, and never quite enough napkins.
“Son of a bitch,” she complained aloud, her hands covered in runny salsa and sour cream drippings. But there was a box in the unit that had cleaning supplies and trash bags. She’d left it behind after cleaning out her old apartment. It was still hanging out around there someplace, she just knew it.
Before long she found an old plastic bucket with the useful cleaning contents—including half a roll of paper towels.
“Sweet,” Leda proclaimed.
While she was over there, she looked around—burrito in hand, still spilling its innards past the foil wrapping and onto the floor. “Gonna have to get that before I go,” she reminded herself. Rats could be an issue down in the south end, between the sound and Lake Washington. If she helped encourage a rat problem for the storage facility, they’d kick her out. It was written into the agreement she’d signed when they gave her the keys.
Near her there were boxes of books she hadn’t read in decades but couldn’t imagine getting rid of. Over there, the summer clothes she’d worn on spring break to Daytona Beach three years in a row. In that corner, a box of sandals that she didn’t get a lot of call for—except for a month or two in the dead of summer.
And over there, she spied a box with club clothes and late-night dancing gear that she hadn’t made use of in ages. The costumes were probably in that one.
But she resisted opening it right away. She had food. She didn’t want to get food all over the costumes. That’s what she told herself as she wandered the small space, reading labels and trying to tamp down all the memories of hopes and plans that hadn’t gone anywhere.
After half the burrito was down the hatch, she was no longer hungry. She swabbed up the lost lettuce, the fugitive bits of pico de gallo, and the smattering of stray cheese shreds, and stuffed it all into the paper take-out bag. Then she tossed the rest of the burrito after it, brushed her hands off on her pants, and decided it was time to dive in.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor, she reached into the box where the costumes were most likely to be and started shoving things around.
Fishnet gloves, nah. Crinolines? Yes, probably. She pulled those out and set them beside her. Hooker boots? Lucille Ball would never. Dear God, the early 2000s had really been a hell of a time for patent leather and lace, like some kind of late-Gothic-revival period.
More gloves, fingerless this time. She’d had them since college, when she’d bought them for an eighties-themed social event. She’d worn a banana clip in her hair, too much hair spray, and a bunch of jelly bracelets on top of an outfit Madonna might have tried in 1984. Then again, she might not have. It was kind of a mess from top to bottom, and Leda laughed to remember it. She’d tried to play a piano in those fingerless gloves, but the bows on the back were so big that they flopped over her wrists, and they kept jamming in the keys.
In the keys.
On the piano.
Something flickered in the back of her head.
The keys, her fingers running across them, picking out “Chopsticks” and getting hung up on every other note. She’d been using another name back then. No. She’d never used another name. Yes, and she’d gotten off scot-free. No, that wasn’t it. What was she thinking of?
Electricity sparked between her ears, pinging off her memories, her clues, and her abilities. It was like a circus in there, so bright and loud and sudden that she could hardly see. She rubbed at her eyes, and it only made the light show worse.
“Ugh,” she groaned. Another ocular migraine. Probably it was her own damn fault, brought about by too much caffeine. She’d read somewhere that caffeine could do that. Or was caffeine supposed to be good for migraines? She didn’t know anymore.
Leda dropped her head until it was hanging over her lap, and she rubbed firmly at her temples.
That night in the student assembly hall, playing with the piano keys—even though music was blaring from the speakers on either side of the large television in the gathering area. The TV had been showing some anime or another, with the volume off and the captions on. She didn’t remember what it was called, or what it was about. She’d been playing the piano, a few notes at a time. Two fingers. Tappity-tap.
She’d gotten away with it, scot-free. No one had complained. No one had caught her. No one had seen what she’d done.
No, there was no Scott. Nothing was free. Not the piano. Not the keys.
No, that’s not what her brain was trying to tell her at all. The message wasn’t coming from her own brain. It was coming from the killer’s.
She clutched the sides of her head, fingers tangling in her hair. “What is this?” she asked nobody and nothing. “I don’t understand.” She fell over, curled up in a fetal position. She held her hands over her eyes. Her heart raced. Her vision flashed, again and again and again.
Suddenly, yes. The connections. The electricity. Right before she passed out cold on the floor of the storage unit. She finally understood who Scott was, and where he fit into the puzzle of who had killed Amanda Crombie, and the Gilmans, and Ms. Copeland, and Tod, too.