Grave Reservations by Cherie Priest
4.
Leda sat aghast behind her desk. She stared at the cop, who calmly unfolded his arms and assumed a relaxed position in the chair across from her. “You want my help? Like… psychic help?”
“Correct,” he informed her.
“Even though I just told you two minutes ago that whatever abilities I have are not very precise or reliable? I don’t know anything much about police work, but I’m reasonably confident that ‘precise’ and ‘reliable’ are two of the more important components.”
“In a perfect world, sure. Hell, in a perfect world I’d be able to pay you as a police consultant, but ‘we don’t do that, here.’ ” Something about the way he said it told Leda that he’d brought it up before and someone had shot it down.
“So when you said you want my help, you meant… you want my help for free.”
“I’d love to have your help for free, but I’m not an asshole. I don’t have a lot of money to throw around, but I can afford your agenting fee. We can call it a trip of a different sort, right? I’ll pay another booking fee, and you can kick around with me for an afternoon. What do you say?”
“This can’t possibly be legal, that’s what I say.”
“Why not? I won’t divulge any sensitive police information, you won’t tell anybody I invited you out for a consultation, and maybe we’re just a couple of pals, sightseeing around the greater Puget Sound area. Bring her, if you want.” He cocked a thumb at Niki. “If she helps, or if you just feel better with a friend present. I realize I’m some random dude you don’t know, and I won’t take it personally if you don’t want to be alone in a car with me.”
“Woo-hoo!” Niki chirped. “It’s a ride-along!”
But Leda wasn’t there yet. “No,” she protested, without really knowing why. “No, that’s a terrible idea. Sir. Detective. Mr. Merritt. Grady,” she tried at last. “You have to understand, this is not a science. It’s not even an art. Like Niki said, it’s a crapshoot. My time is a waste of your money.”
“This time it’s my own personal money, not precinct travel funds—and I’ll waste it however I want. I promise I won’t get mad if nothing pans out, and I’ll never say a word about this to anybody, ever. Believe me, I don’t want the rest of the guys at the precinct knowing I hired a psychic, no offense. They give me enough shit for being vegetarian.” He sat forward, a gleam in his eye. “What do you say?”
What could she say?
Nowas always an option, but did she really want to peeve a policeman? He didn’t seem like the petty sort, not that she was a particularly good judge of that kind of thing. She’d saved his life, hadn’t she? She could probably get away with telling him no.
Instead, she said, “I don’t want to look at any dead bodies.”
“No dead bodies, swear to God.”
“You know I’m probably going to get it wrong.”
“Your instincts are imprecise and unreliable, got it.”
“Then why do you even want them?” she asked, exasperated.
Firmly, insistently, he said, “Because this case has been driving me crazy. I have to believe that it’s solvable, but I need a hint, or a nudge, or a clue—and I’m willing to take any half-ass, foggy, wayward clue I can get.”
“Even if it comes from a psychic travel agent who’s never actually helped anybody, not even once, in her whole entire life?”
“You helped me.”
She sighed hard enough to blow out a birthday cake. “Okay, you got me there. But that was an accident! I’ve never done anybody any good before. Not on purpose. Not when it really counted.”
“Don’t you want to… I don’t know. Help your fellow man? Contribute to the net good in the world? Fight crime? Everybody likes to fight crime, right?”
Leda and Niki exchanged a look.
They were both thinking about the same thing: a guy who nobody saved and whose violent death had never been explained. Leda didn’t want to go anywhere near that subject, so she asked Grady a question instead.
“I am no fan of crime or criminals, but you’re not hearing me. Let me try to explain from another angle. Do you ever watch Saturday Night Live?”
He shrugged. “I used to, but I haven’t in years.”
“That’s okay. The skit I’m thinking of aired back in the nineties, I think.”
“Were you even alive back then?”
She smirked. “Flattery will get you nowhere. I saw the skit on YouTube when I was in college, and it stuck with me. Here’s why,” she added fast, keeping the anecdote moving before he could derail it. “I don’t know if it had an official name, but me and Nik always call it the ‘Inconsequential Psychic’ skit. There’s a psychic who goes around warning people about silly stuff. Tells them they’re going to spill coffee in their car on the way to work, that kind of thing.”
“Okay?”
“Well, I’m the real-life inconsequential psychic. Nothing I ever see or feel or whatever… none of it is actually very important. Usually my, um, flashes of insight, if you will, they’re super pointless.”
“For example?”
Nik interjected. “The gazpacho.”
Leda pointed at her. “Yes. The gazpacho. The other day we were headed to this lunch place we like, over on Capitol Hill. On the way there, I had this powerful feeling that there would be no gazpacho soup, and that was exactly what I wanted, so I said we should go someplace else. Nik wanted the polenta, though, and she was all, ‘Noooo… I want to do Shirley’s anyway….’ So that’s what we did.”
“And you were right?”
“I was stuck with the quiche, yes.”
Niki rolled her eyes. “It’s good freaking quiche, Leda. Jesus.”
“It’s not as good as the gazpacho!” Leda insisted. “What I’m trying to say is, even when my oddball clairvoyance is reliable, it isn’t useful to anybody. Ever. Except for you, that one time.”
He dug in his heels. “Maybe I’m special. Come on, what have you got to lose? You don’t look very busy…” he said, his eyes scanning the room for signs of other clientele. The phone didn’t ring, the email alert didn’t chime, and no text messages buzzed in to anybody’s cell. “I’ll pay you double your rate.”
Slowly, methodically, and with great drama, Leda began to bang her head up and down on her desk. “This. Is. The worst. Idea. Ever.”
“Great!” He reached into a pocket and pulled out his business card. “We’ll do it this weekend. Text me with whichever day and time work best, and we’ll meet wherever you like.”
“Castaways!” Niki suggested.
“No,” said Leda immediately. “Not Castaways.”
“What’s Castaways? And what’s wrong with it?” Grady wanted to know.
“It’s a bar. Or a venue. It’s… all things to everyone, but it’s closed on Sundays, and it doesn’t open until four on Saturdays.” Then to Grady, she said, “Listen, I’ll think about it, okay? Give me a day to decide.”
He rose to his feet and offered her his hand, now that she wasn’t banging her head on the desk anymore. “I can do that. Thanks for your time, Ms. Foley.”
She accepted the handshake and added wearily, “It’s Leda. Just Leda.”
“Leda, then. I hope to see you soon.”
When the door had shut behind him, and the last echo of his footsteps had faded down the stairs, both women flailed their arms at each other.
Leda’s voice was high enough to summon dolphins when she squeaked excitedly, “What am I going to do? A cop wants to take me clue-hunting!”
“You’re a bloodhound. You’ll be awesome!” Niki replied in kind. Then she took it down an octave to add, “You should totally do it. He’s a paying customer, and this is a travel agency without a surplus of travelers to agent. He’s already promised not to be mad if you suck at this.”
“Oh, I am going to suck at this.”
Niki grinned. “Is that a psychic prediction?”
“That’s a non-psychic certainty.” She put her head back down on her desk and left it there, her forehead smearing the surface with makeup. Her voice was muffled when she concluded, “But I don’t actually have a bad feeling about it.”
“You don’t?”
She picked her head up and pondered what she’d just said. “I don’t. I don’t know how useful I’ll be, but I don’t feel any apocalyptic doom or anything. At worst, I’ll be useless. Right? Even though… I mean… you know.”
Neither one of them wanted to say it out loud. Niki tiptoed around it. “I know, but maybe this is a good opportunity. You’re making friends with a cop—a cop who isn’t weirded out by your psychic stuff. Even if you can’t help him with his case, maybe he can help you with yours.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“Like what? Like you’re not still looking for answers?”
Leda shot her a warning look. “Tod is gone. It’s been three years, and the police haven’t been ultra helpful so far.”
“It’s not like they had a lot to go on. You weren’t a lot of help.”
The warning look went sharp.
Niki walked it back. “No one knew why Tod was in the back seat of his own car, or why he was all the way out past Renton, or why anybody would want to hurt him. Not even you.”
“Stop it. Just stop talking.”
“All I’m saying,” Niki persisted, “is that it can’t hurt to be friendly with a police detective. He could dig up the case, take another look at the evidence. He seems pretty sharp; he might see something the other guys missed.”
“Nicole.”
It was like she’d used a safe word. Niki closed her trap and waited to see if this was going to turn into a fight or just a round of sad bickering.
Leda sat back in her chair. She pressed her hands flat on her desk, then used her palm to rub away the sweat smudge she’d left with her forehead. “One psych-curious cop with a stale cold case isn’t going to change what happened to Tod. It might not even be Grady’s jurisdiction, or however that works.”
Carefully, Niki said, “That’s no reason not to help him, if you can.”
Leda thought about it for a minute, and then waved a white flag. “Okay, fine. You’re right. If I can help, awesome. If I refuse to try, then I’m a jerk. Screw it. I’m in. But I don’t want to go alone. Are you in?”
“Yes, but not if you want to do it Saturday. Me and Matt have plans. We’re going to Snoqualmie for a train thing. You know Matt and trains.”
“Dammit. Saturday is the only day that makes sense for me.”
“Go on without me; you’ll be fine. No really bad feelings, right? Meet him for coffee, or meet him here, or whatever feels good to you.” Niki picked herself up off the IKEA love seat, adjusted her stance with the plastic boot, and said, “Come on, it’s almost five o’clock. Clock out or sign off. Now that I’ve said it out loud, I’m feeling Castaways.”
“You just want to go see Matt.” Her boyfriend was the manager there.
“Come on. Let’s get some drinks, and if you feel like a little klairvoyant karaoke, nobody will stop you.”
“Now’s really not the time.”
“I’m sorry I brought up Tod, but you know I’m right about this.” Niki picked an oversize sweater off the rack by the door. “You always feel better after you sing. It’s like exercise, or eating your vegetables, or mediation. But with glitter and the occasional high note.”
“I’m not doing any klairvoyant karaoke.”
She flung the sweater over her shoulders. “Suit yourself. Get a nice grown-up slushie and watch me do some karaoke of the non-psychic kind.”
“You have a terrible voice.”
“It’s Thursday. Nobody will be there to hear it, and I am not ashamed.”
Leda got up, too. There was no escaping Niki’s gravitational field of forced fun times, even when the afternoon had gone a little dark. “You sound like a crow being strangled.”
“Only until I’ve had a couple of drinks.”
“Then you sound like two crows being strangled.”
“I love you, too.” Niki collected Leda’s jacket, balled it up, and tossed it to her. “Get a move on, girlie. Rush-hour traffic is upon us.”
“Let’s take the light rail.”
“The station is four blocks from Castaways, and I’m not exactly in hiking shape at the moment. If you’ll recall.” She held up her booted foot for emphasis.
“Fine,” Leda sulked, feeling like a jerk because she hadn’t thought of Niki’s bum foot. She picked up her purse and fished out her car keys. “I’ll go get Jason.”
“Jason” was a baby-blue Accord that Leda had bought on a Friday the thirteenth. Sometimes Leda wondered if she shouldn’t have named it “Jamie Lee” instead, but it was too late to turn the habit around now. Grumpily, she stomped past Niki and down the corridor, then out the side door that promised an alarm if opened. There was no such alarm.
“I’ll bring the car around front.”
Niki promised, “I’ll be there!” and locked the door behind herself.
Five minutes later, Leda pulled up, and Niki secured herself in the passenger seat. Castaways was only half an hour out if the traffic was good.