Deja New Read online

  “So this is how we’re all spending our Saturday night,” she joked. “Such partiers.”

  “Sunday morning, technically.”

  “But you’re okay, right, Leah? The baby’s okay?”

  “Yes. The baby . . . the baby’s fine”

  Jack’s eyes widened. “Um, that pause was terrifying. Should we be calling an ambulance?”

  Leah shook her head. Angela was amused to notice she was in one of Archer’s old button-downs and a pair of gym shorts that had seen better days. “The baby’s perfectly healthy. That’s not why I’m up. But you’re very nice to be concerned.”

  “I’m not concerned or nice. I’m just trying to avoid a lawsuit,” Jack lied.

  “I’m fine, the baby’s fine. Besides, you wouldn’t believe it if I told you,” Leah said. “That’s not a challenge. It’s just a fact. There is no point in telling you. You won’t believe me.”

  “If you’re trying not to pique our interest,” Jack said, “you’re sucking at it.”

  “Do you make any caffeine-free desserts?”

  “Yeah, that wasn’t an obvious topic change. Fine, keep your secrets. That’s what we do around here.” He looked at Angela. “Right?”

  He knows! He knows I have a crush on Jason Chambers and his crazy/cool socks!

  “They’re just socks, I don’t care, they’re not even sexy!” Oh, my God. Here comes the most awkward pause in the history of human events. Say something. Either of you. Something.

  “I don’t think you’ve had enough cocoa.”

  “Never mind.” Angela pushed the thought of erotic socks to the back of her brain. “Jack, I’m starting to think it’s time for a checkup.”

  “Why? You seem fine to me. No more driven or shriller or controlling than usual.”

  “For you, dumbass. A checkup for you.” To Leah: “Oh, don’t laugh, you’re just encouraging him.”

  “Can’t help it.” She giggled. “You’re all adorable.”

  “That’s a blatant falsehood. What lies has that lying SOB Archer told you when he lied about us?” Before she could respond, Jack held up his hands and made soothing motions. “It’s okay. Shouldn’t have put you on the spot. You don’t have to pretend Paul and Mitchell are adorable. It’s enough to acknowledge my and Angela’s adorableness.”

  “Duly acknowledged.”

  “So the baby’s fine.” At Leah’s nod, Angela continued. “And, Jack, you don’t need an appointment.” Jack nodded. “And I’m not obsessed.” She nodded for herself. If someone were to walk in—who wasn’t a family member—they’d think we were all secret-keeping lunatics. Oh, wait . . . “So we’re all in the kitchen at 4:30 a.m. because everything’s fine.”

  “Seems like.”

  “That’s an accurate summation,” Leah said.

  “So none of us have anything to tell each other.”

  “Nope.”

  “What the chef said.”

  Delighted, Jack turned to Leah at once. “You think I’m a chef? Tomorrow, I’ll make you oatmeal and porridge! Later today, I mean. But not triple coffee cheesecake. Because I’m bored with that one now and we’re out of coffee.”

  “I could buy you more coffee,” Leah said hopefully.

  “Bring me all the coffee,” the teenager declared, “and I shall visit upon you the most divine Chocolate Coffee Cardamom Layer Cake you’ve ever had.”

  Leah beamed into her cup of cocoa. And Angela, who was still uneasy from her dream/flashback, couldn’t help smiling. Because, yeah, something was up with all three of them. But Jack had made it clear he wasn’t ready to be forthcoming, and Leah’s health was, frankly, no one’s business but hers and Archer’s.

  And that was . . . that was all right, Angela decided. Sure it was. She could feel herself prodding that new idea. So . . . DON’T be a controlling jerkass in this instance? Hmm. Radical thought. Am I on board? This one time I might be on board. I’ll be more controlling tomorrow to make up for it. Promise.

  “Angela?”

  I wouldn’t have been capable of this five years ago. Or maybe even last year. Maybe Archer isn’t the only one who grew up.

  “Helloooooo?”

  “I’m here,” she said automatically.

  “Sure you are.”

  Sometimes, she was coming to learn, you didn’t have to spill everything and then talk it to death. You could just . . . be together. Even if it didn’t solve anything.

  Or maybe she was just tired. Either way: “So, who wants a refill besides me?”

  Turns out, they all did.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Angela had missed the same spelling error three times in a row

  (no more 4:30 a.m. hot chocolate for you, missy! at least not this week)

  and when her phone rattled (Mitchell’s suggestion that she download a rattlesnake rattle* for her ringtone was genius), she was glad for an excuse to take a break. To her surprise, Jason Chambers was calling. The chat had been short

  (“Of course you can come over.”)

  and sweet

  (“It’s nice to hear from you!”).

  Also: ugh. Nice to hear from him? She sounded like someone’s aunt. And not a cool aunt, the way Dennis had been the fun uncle. Somebody’s grumpy aunt, the kind who kept all the balls that dropped into her yard and wrote bitchy letters to the editor about how noisy the downtown area was.

  When Detective Chambers turned up a half hour later, she was ready for him. She’d put on makeup, run mousse and a curling iron through her hair, picked out appropriately sober-yet-stylish clothing that flattered and covered at the same time.

  And then she undid all of it because good God, who dresses for a date when a homicide detective was giving you an update about your murdered father?

  So she brushed the curls out of her hair, blew her bangs out of her face (her hair was always in one of two stages: “I’m growing it out” or “I need a haircut”), and slipped into black leggings, a thigh-skimming cranberry-colored long-sleeved tunic, and plain navy flats. She looked in the mirror, pronounced herself as not trying too hard, and went to the kitchen to wait.

  Minutes later, she opened the kitchen door before he had a chance to knock and saw at once that she wasn’t the only one low on sleep: His kind eyes had shadows beneath them. The navy blue suit was clean but rumpled, like he’d napped in it. And the dark stubble blooming along his jaw wasn’t sexy at all and, oh, God, why did she lie to herself? She wanted to give herself beard burn. He wouldn’t even have to do anything. Just stand still while she grabbed his head and rubbed his face all over her.

  Archer had come in behind her and shook hands with Jason. “Hey, Detective, how’s it going?”

  “Fine, Mr. Drake. Could you come with me now?” he asked Angela. “I’ve got something I think you need to see.”

  “That sounds like every Star Trek: TNG* ever,” Archer declared. He had a point. They were a Trekkie household, always had been (nothing against the Star Wars franchise, they were fine if you liked glorified soap operas whose characters all had daddy issues*).

  They’d all noticed that no one ever gave Captain Picard specifics. Ever. It could be a bomb, it could be a spy, it could be a bomb made of spies, and all Riker or Geordi would ever say was, “Captain, I think you should see this” or “Captain, you’d better get down here.” As Paul had pointed out when he was a wee lad (a wee-er lad), “They’re all terrible at debriefing their superior officer. Did they all flunk military protocol?”*

  (This had the unfortunate side effect of sparking the “Resolved: That the United Federation of Planets is the galaxy’s military, not the galaxy’s Peace Corps” debate again. No one got to bed before 3:00 a.m.)

  “Why? Do you have an update?” she asked. “A new witness?” A new witness would be wonderful. The old ones were dead or had disappeared or had refused to talk in the fi
rst place. A new witness would be Christmas.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know if it’s related to the case or not.”

  Okay. Is that disappointing? Am I disappointed?

  “Will you come?”

  Not disappointed. “Of course, I can go right now. I— Wait.” She turned to Archer. “What’s Mom up to?”

  “Dunno. Jack said she’s in her room with the door closed.”

  “Fine.”

  “But she knows he’s here,” he added, jerking his head toward Jason. “She asked who was knocking.”

  “Okay. So it’s unlikely she’ll come out anytime soon.”

  “Based on my lifetime of observing her behavior . . . yeah. Pretty safe bet.”

  Fine. Better than Widow Drake storming into the kitchen, insulting Jason for reasons only known to her, then vanishing for hours, maybe days. She remembered her uncle telling Jason to go direct traffic last week and wondered what caused the older generation of Drakes to have so little respect for law enforcement. She hoped, very sincerely, it skipped a generation. Preferably two or three generations.

  Paul had once pointed out that living with Emma was like sharing a house with the Phantom of the Opera: You knew she was creeping around somewhere behind the scenes, wanting everyone to remain in the house, but she was hardly ever seen.

  Jason was probably a bit weirded out by the exchange. Suddenly Angela was too tired to go into it one more time. “It’s complicated,” she said, and shrugged.

  Jason pointed to himself. “Homicide detective. I know all about complicated.”

  “That’s true,” Archer cheerfully acknowledged. “You’ve seen shit that would horrify even us. Probably. Well, maybe not Leah. But the rest of us?”

  “Maybe,” Jason replied, deadpan.

  “Possibly,” Angela added, and then giggled, because why not? It was turning into that kind of day. Week.

  So that was that.

  • • •

  “THIS WILL SOUND strange,” Jason Chambers began stiffly, “but I find cemeteries relaxing.”

  “I feel the same way about KitKats.”

  That startled a laugh out of him. “I knew I should have brought something to bribe you.”

  “You don’t have to bribe me,” she said quickly. “I was glad to hear from you.”

  “That may change,” he said quietly, shutting off the ignition.

  It was late afternoon and she would have loved a nap. But her fatigue had taken flight when Jason called. They were in his

  (boat, carriage, train, car, who cares?)

  car at a

  (grocery store, gym, library, AA meeting, who cares?)

  cemetery she was more than familiar with: Graceland.

  “Okay, this I didn’t expect.”

  “I wasn’t even here for your case,” Jason said as they got out of his car. “Like I said, I like cemeteries. They’re beautiful and quiet. Sometimes the precinct . . . it’s all noise, and most of it doesn’t make much sense. I like my work, but some days . . .”

  “Jason, you’re talking to the woman who studied for finals in a prison visiting area. You don’t have to explain one thing about yourself to me. It’s fine.”

  “Thank you.”

  “For what? Not judging the hell out of you and then running away screaming?”

  “Yes.”

  So out of curiosity, how many people have done that to you? Two? Five? Enough to make you feel bad about enjoying gorgeous landscaping, that’s for sure. Morons.

  “Did you know,” he began, “they used to bury bodies on top of each other? It never occurred to them to spread out, so they packed them like sardines.”

  “Annnnnd now you’ve ruined sardines for me.”

  He smiled at her. “Sorry. But as I was saying, back in the day, Graceland was designed the new way, with more space and better maintained tombstones. They even set aside space for families to have picnics. So the grounds weren’t just beautiful, they were practical. I think that’s lovely. You know the saying: ‘In the midst of life, we are—’”

  “‘—having picnics.’ Yep, got it.” But it was interesting. Visits here had always been more of a duty than a pleasure, but she had to admit it was peaceful.

  “Do you have family here?”

  “No.”

  “I mean—are you buried here? One of your past lives?”

  He smiled and she caught a glimpse of that enchanting dimple. “No. I just like cemeteries. Especially their histories.”

  “Well, Graceland’s got a lot of that. It’s a who’s who type of graveyard.” A who’s who type of . . . Gawd. Stop. Talking.

  Luckily, Jason picked up the conversation slack. “Did you know George Pullman’s here? His family was so worried about activists and former employees wreaking havoc on the corpse—”

  “‘Wreaking havoc on the corpse,’” she repeated, delighted. “I really like the way you talk. It’s friggin’ poetry.”

  “Thanks.” Was that a blush? Surely not. “His family buried him in the middle of the night, in utmost secrecy. They lined his coffin with lead and sealed it up with reinforced concrete.”

  “Those wacky anti-industrialists.”

  Jason grinned. “It worked. But even if it hadn’t, my thinking is: If you were prepared to go to all that trouble, and actually broke through to the coffin, take the body. It’s yours. You’ve earned it.”

  They giggled guiltily, like kids who were talking about something so awful, it was actually funny. Or seemed that way.

  Jason pointed out a few monuments. “They also had to move quite a few bodies here after the 1871 fire.”

  “Yeah, I read about that somewhere. It always gave me a creepy Poltergeist vibe.”

  “Sorry?”

  “‘You left the bodies and you only moved the headstones! You only moved the headstones!’ You know. Poltergeist? Not the remake. The good one from the eighties. No?” She shook her head. “Terrible. Your habit of lurking in cemeteries is fine—”

  “Lurk is an exaggeration.”

  “But your inability to see Poltergeist despite having had decades to do so is gonna be a problem.”

  “I would never want to be a problem for you,” he replied seriously. “I’ll see it.”

  What? He will? Just like that? Naw. Really? Is it possible this crush isn’t just one-sided?

  Naw.

  “It’s right over here,” he added, gently taking her by the elbow

  (!!!!!!!)

  and leading her past the imposing mausoleums. As always, she averted her gaze from the Eternal Silence statue. A bronze sculpture (oxidized, so it shone green, not brass) with a black base, the thing was ten feet tall, a sinister robed and hooded figure holding one arm across its face like Dracula fending off sunshine.

  She’d been amazed and a little frightened (in her defense, she’d still been a kid) to find out there was a legend about the statue: If you looked into its dead stony gaze, you’d have a vision of your own death.* For years afterward, Mitchell always blindfolded the thing when they visited.

  Should’ve taken a page out of Jason’s book and just gone on picnics instead.

  Wait. She knew this path. She recognized everything. “We’re going to my father’s grave, aren’t we?”

  “Yes.”

  That . . . that couldn’t be good. She couldn’t think of any instance in which a concerned cop taking her to her father’s grave would work out for her. Not one.

  Then she saw it. And instantly knew why she was there.

  My God.

  THIRTY

  She couldn’t stop staring. Her father’s grave consumed her world, which was probably a metaphor for . . . something. “Jesus. And you don’t think it’s random.”

  “No. I don’t think it’s random. I think it was specifically targeted.�
�

  Her father’s grave had been—there was no other way to put it—brutalized. Someone had come along and smeared black paint over the name. Then they’d hit and gouged the hell out of it with a hammer or hatchet or something—and had shoved it off the base so it was off-center but hadn’t fallen over.

  “Any other graves? Or just my dad’s?”

  “Just his. As I said, I think it was targeted.” He pointed at the scrawls, the signs of violence. “They weren’t just after any random gravestone—we had to walk past, what? A few hundred others?”

  “At least.”

  “There are hundreds of graves closer to the entrance, or concealed better so the vandals wouldn’t be as exposed. But they walked past all those for this one. And see the name? Completely and deliberately obliterated, but they left the dates alone. And when they’d made as much of a mess as they could with the paint, they started kicking it—see the tread marks? Kicking the name over and over? That’s focused negative emotion, not ‘Jeepers I feel destructive, let’s go trash a random tomb.’”

  “Okay, first: ‘jeepers’? And second, good point. And third, what the hell?”

  “That was my literal thought when I saw it: What the hell.”

  “And you just happened to be here and found it like this.”

  “Yes.” She saw his shoulders stiffen. “I understand why you might wonder if I have anything to do with it, but if you’ll notice the soles of my shoes—” He hiked up one pant leg and she grinned to see Mona Lisa staring back at her from his ankle. “There’s no paint. Of course, I could have changed shoes, but if you check with the dispatcher, I can prove I was on duty—”

  “I like your Monet ones the best, but these are pretty good, too.”

  He froze in the act of rolling his pant leg back down. “You noticed. My socks?”

  “Yeah.” Busted. “It’s unsettling, right? Me noticing them and then creepily commenting about how I stare at your legs a lot? Yeah, it is. Forget I said anything. Your socks are boring and even if they weren’t, I sure didn’t notice them.”