Indelible Beats: An Abishag's Second Mystery (Abishag Mysteries Book 2) Read online

  My face felt hot. “He’s not making me marry again. In fact, he can’t know about it. He’s not crazy about dating a former Abishag. He’d go ballistic if he found out I married again.” I finished the mushrooms on Stanley’s plate. “I can’t date anyone while I’m married anyway. It’s an agency rule.”

  Both Kat and Dog stared at me, for some reason puzzled, while Stanley switched to a different podcast. Faintly I heard from his earbuds, “…as evidenced by the cancellation of Firefly, the signal cannot be…”

  “You need money?” Kat asked softly.

  I nodded. “If you want the January rent. It’s not Donovan’s fault, but between tuition and the clothes and…”

  “I knew it.” Dog exploded. “Dump him, Les. He’s a louse and treats you like crap. You don’t need that. You don’t deserve it.”

  “He’s not that bad. My parents like him.”

  Kat muttered something I couldn’t make out.

  “Before you say anything about my parents,” I said. “My mom consented not only to me marrying Jordan but to not telling Donovan about it too. They’re totally onboard.”

  I ignored Dog’s glare. He and Kat think my parents are self-serving. Even if my parents are, there’s nothing really wrong with that, is there? Especially in politics.

  Kat chewed her lip. “Okay, I know it’s Jordan Ippel, but don’t you think it a little creepy that a mother would sign over her daughter to a burned-out druggy who probably really has done all the sordid things he’s been accused of? Why did she?”

  I raised my chin smugly and began picking the mushrooms off the last pizza slice. “My mother thinks my dad’s ripe for the state race next year, and there’ll be loads of the right people to support him at a museum opening in Sacramento during Christmas week.”

  I put the pizza on Stanley’s plate and ate the mushrooms one at a time.

  Kat sighed. “An art museum where Jordan Ippel’s works will be displayed?”

  “I called his lawyer. He’d read about me last summer and thought I’d make a good Abishag for Jordan. He agreed to loaning the new museum several paintings and securing an invitation for my parents to the opening reception. They’ve even asked my dad to say a few words on Jordan’s behalf.”

  Dog snorted, and Kat shook her head. Stanley noticed the mushroom-free pizza on his plate and took a bite.

  Kat shot Dog a speculative look, which he returned. “Maybe you’d better call that lawyer back,” Kat said.

  “Oh, no.” I pushed away my plate. “You’re not talking me out of doing this.”

  “We’re not,” Dog said. He picked up the plates, including the one holding Stanley’s half-eaten slice and headed for the sink.

  “It’s Christmas,” Kat said. “We’re not letting you spend the holidays alone with a dying man.”

  I swallowed. “The lawyer seemed pretty protective of Jordan’s privacy.”

  “Tell him to check our references with Tina Crowder,” Dog said. “He may be looking for a hospice aide during the holidays anyway.”

  Kat grinned. “You can tell him I’ve got experience crating artwork, and I can provide references. He’ll probably need someone to prep paintings for the Sacramento opening.”

  I didn’t think I could speak around the lump in my throat, but I managed: “You guys are the best. I’ll make the call.”

  “Hey,” Stanley said, pulling off his headphones. “Who took my pizza?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “I’m dying back here.” I collapsed against the cracked leather seats of Dog’s ancient Saab.

  Although Kat had been complaining about it for the past two hours, I’d cracked open the back window because I needed the frigid ocean blast for health reasons. I needed the noise to cover Dog’s Slavic dance music blaring from the speakers and the front seat conversation that sometimes shifted from romantic to uncomfortable. I needed the coast route’s sometimes fishy, sometimes diesel smell to cover whatever Dog had spilled in the years he’d owned the car from medical school experiments, hospice-aid temp-work scrubs, or the fermented kimchi that he devoured every chance he could.

  I also needed the cold air to stay awake. Exhausted from the week’s final exams, I feared being lulled senseless by the motion of the car. I wanted to be alert when we reached Jordan’s—our—home within the hour. I’d briefly met Jordan’s attorney in the signing ceremony, but I’d be seeing him soon at the house, along with Jordan’s doctor, and his business partner.

  Not even evening and I felt myself crashing. “I’m dying back here,” I said louder. “I need caffeine.”

  “Can’t hear you,” Kat said sweetly. “Not with that energy-inefficient gale of wind through the open window.”

  I cranked the window shut, fumbled to free myself of my seatbelt and reached forward between the seats to turn off the tape player. (Yes, the Saab was that old.)

  “Hey,” Dog protested. “Fasten your seatbelt. You know what an ER doc calls an unrestrained accident victim?”

  “Don’t care,” I muttered, leaning back and strapping myself in anyway.

  “A corpse.”

  “Are we there yet?” I jerked on the belt a couple of times to make sure it’d engaged. Marrying near-corpses didn’t mean I wanted to become one. “I need caffeine.”

  “Dog knows a Starbucks in La Jolla. It’s near a distillery we’re stopping at... Don’t you dare open that window again.”

  “Okay, okay,” I groused. “Then no more gypsy music and no more mushy talk.”

  “Mushy talk? What are you? Ten?” With a sputter from the Saab, Dog exited the freeway.

  “She’s a romantic rationalist,” Kat said.

  I ignored them, my attention fixed on the landscape of La Jolla. You couldn’t grow up in Southern California and not know that it is where the upper crust of San Diego county lived.

  It was a beautiful place to spend the Christmas holidays, and I’d been lucky to nab this assignment—if lucky was the right word—when Jordan’s Abishag could easily have been a San Diego girl from one of the many universities in the county. It did seem odd that the request had been filed with the Westwood agency. Maybe they’d had trouble finding someone local—especially if some of the stories Kat relayed about Jordan were true.

  Everyone needed somebody, and fate gave me to Jordan.

  “Why are we going to a distillery?” I asked. “Doesn’t seem a good idea to stock up, what with Jordan being an addict.”

  “He’s on life support, Les,” Kat said. “He’s not going to be raiding the wine cellar.”

  “Not that kind of distillery,” Dog said. “Olive oil and vinegar. Our landlord asked me to pick up a bottle of huckleberry balsamic.”

  I perked up. Only Dog had ever met the mysterious landlord who owned the shabby West LA two-story that housed nine UCLA students. I suspected that he was in the murky network of Kat’s contacts, those I called her Nefarious Crew. She’d once let something slip that he’d been a professor at one time but now fenced stolen goods.

  Last spring, I found a pottery shard in the woodshed. It practically reeked of antiquity, and I suspected that our landlord had liberated it from some pillaged pyramid. It had glyphs on it that could have been Mesopotamian, although being a math major I don’t exactly know what Mesopotamian glyphs look like.

  I pictured a satin-haired Cleopatra dipping olive oil from the pot, her gaze straying to egrets soaring over the Nile, dreaming of love.

  “Where’d you go?” Kat squinted at me.

  I blinked. Dog had parked on a street lined with boutiques, specialty markets, sea-kayak rental stands and cafes. I had my seatbelt off and flashed out the door when I saw the familiar green awning of Starbucks.

  Urgently sipping my latte minutes later, I headed to the distillery and found Kat and Dog sampling a lemon-infused olive oil from Sonoma.

  “Yikes.” I spied the price. “It’s not even Italian.”

  “Many prefer Californian olive oils.” A guy my age approached, his nametag id
entifying him as Nathan and a distiller. My cheeks warmed at his disapproving tone.

  Nathan stalled, blinking at me. In my short maroon Vera Wang dress with lace accents and a flounce hem, matched with ballet flats and a hot pink Tory Burch cross-body bag, I’d dressed to please Jordan’s people, knowing that any outfit receiving Donovan’s approval would meet the most critical measure. The distiller’s lips pursed in a small whistle, amusing Dog and Kat. Then he leapt into action.

  Taking my elbow, Nathan whisked away my latte. Ignoring my protests, he steered me to a line of stainless steel urns and served me thimble after thimble of olive oil. I sampled varietals at various stages of harvest, oils infused with rosemary, basil, and garlic while staring sadly at my latte going cold near the register. He then mixed a series of oils with balsamic vinegars—blackberry, cherry, pomegranate, even chocolate.

  To make him stop, I agreed to buy a black cherry balsamic as a New Year’s present for the housemates and a Napa Valley late-harvest olive oil for my parents’ Christmas gift. I picked out a basil olive oil and a bergamot balsamic for Donovan even though I knew he’d complain that they weren’t Tuscan. In his opinion, Italians made everything finer. I’d leave the price tags on, knowing the cost would please him.

  Sipping my tepid latte, I tried not to flinch as I handed over my credit card. At least it wouldn’t get rejected, and my stipend from the agency would arrive soon enough to cover the bill. I might even have my settlement from the Ippel estate by then.

  “Visiting friends in La Jolla?” Nathan asked as he rang up my purchases. Maybe I could have passed for a La Jolla resident, but he probably tagged us visitors given Kat with her blond dreadlocks, tattoos, Mexican serape covering a tank, overalls, and hiking boots. Dog in his worn leather coat over scrubs didn’t exactly blend either.

  “My husband lives here.” I tried for casual but knew I probably missed sophisticated by a mile. I’m told I look like a high schooler, even when wearing department store mascara and carrying an $800 weekender.

  “Just married.” Kat reached for the huckleberry balsamic that Dog bought. “We’re taking her to the husband’s house now.”

  “You’re married—” The distiller’s shock cleared. “Oh, you’re an Abishag wife.”

  I tensed. Some get downright nasty about Abishags, but he added, “That’s cool. Anyone I’d know?”

  “Jordan Ippel.” I raised my voice slightly so his name could reach the two women in the tapenade section and ignored Kat’s amusement. If Jordan’s fame gave my parents entry into the art world, why shouldn’t I enjoy being a celebrity too? It’s not like I knew anyone in La Jolla—or that it could get back to Donovan.

  One of the women gasped, and the distiller’s smile disappeared. “The artist?”

  My own smile slipped to something more wary. “Yes,” I said. So much for trying to connect with people.

  His attention suddenly fixed on the register, clearly discomfited. The women flicked glances at me as they mumbled excitedly. Dog and Kat exchanged a troubled look as the bell above the door tinkled.

  “I hope you enjoy your purchases.” Heading for the new customer, Nathan paused next to me, his gaze averted, and whispered, “Marriage is a risky business.”

  I blinked at him. “Excuse me?”

  He swallowed, his gaze skimming over the customer near the capers before settling on Kat’s left hiking boot. “I’m saying it’s a risky business. Being married to a man like Jordan Ippel is deadly. Watch yourself.”

  He changed direction for the customer who’d moved from capers to mustards, and I looked at Kat who understood the vagaries of people far better than me.

  She shrugged. “Obviously, he doesn’t know you, Les. You found a dead body on your wedding night with Crowder. What could be more risky than that?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Although the drive to Jordan’s house from the store took only a few minutes, I completely recaptured my composure.

  Who am I kidding? What really happened is that my brain shut down, probably for the best considering what I had ahead of me. Dog and Kat tried encouraging me, mouthing platitudes intended to be calming, but the only thought ticking like a metronome in my head was: not again, not again, not again.

  Maybe Jordan Ippel didn’t simply look like Dracula. Maybe he was an actual vampire and everyone in La Jolla—no, everyone in San Diego County—knew it. That’s why his attorney had to go all the way to Westwood to hire a wife for his nearly dead friend.

  And if Jordan wasn’t nearly dead but actually Undead, I’d be warming the bed of the Permanently Cold. And the dead body they’d be finding would be mine.

  “She’s making up fairy stories in her head again.” Dog’s words cut through the Boris Karloff movie playing in my brain.

  Kat studied my face. “Not the kind with happy endings, eh?”

  I shook my head. With rising despair, I spotted our destination at the end of a cul de sac: a tall, narrow house of bleached grey wood. A modest dwelling by La Jolla standards, it sat on a lot probably less than a twentieth the size of Thomas Crowder’s estate in Palos Verdes. The driveway was thick with pine needles as if no cars had passed that way in a long time. At the top of the driveway and east of the house, a rustic-looking staircase led to an eerie aerie. For some reason it popped into my mind that it had been my husband’s studio.

  That was where he kept the bones of the women he’d drained dry and discarded. I studied the structure in morbid fascination.

  “Les?”

  “What do you think he does—did—in there?” I rolled down the window and, resting chin on arm, leaned into a rustling evening breeze that smelled of sea and pine.

  “Paint?” Kat mocked me. “I heard he was an artist.”

  Dog shifted impatiently. “What did you think it was? Where he burns the bodies in the kiln or poses them as statues and then—”

  “Stop it, Dog.” Kat jerked her head at me—as if he could make me feel any more freaked out than I’d felt since the distillery.

  “Sorry, Les,” Dog said, immediately contrite. “I forgot that you need no help in creating wild tales. You ready to meet the, uh, your husband?”

  Still numb, I nodded.

  Time for an explanation of romantic rationalism as I’m its poster child. As a romantic, I believed in love and Prince Charming, in glass slippers, dragons and gingerbread cottages. As a rationalist, I don’t believe in Happily Ever After. Nothing lasted, not the love or the charming or the slippers. Only ashes and frogs.

  When I opened the car door, the porch light illuminated and a man stepped into view. “Leslie Greene?”

  I waved. “It’s me, Mister Cochrane. I hope you haven’t been waiting long.”

  He hurtled down the sidewalk to scoop me into a large bear hug, emphasis on the “bear.” Like Jordan, Aaron Cochrane was in his late 60s, his brown hair salted with grey. Six-foot-five and broad, he shambled when he walked slowly, plunged avalanche-like when hurrying.

  He hugged Kat when I introduced them. Dog offered his hand quickly—not a hugging-kind of guy.

  “Mister Cochrane…” I began.

  “Call me Aaron, Leslie. Ip’s my oldest friend, and I won’t stand on ceremony with his wife.”

  Ip? I felt comforted. No way would Aaron have a vampire friend or feed him young girls. No way do you call a vampire “Ip.”

  He rubbed his arms. “Brrr. Let’s grab your luggage and get inside. The doc and I got a fire going, made tea, and the housekeeper laid out a light supper with a huge fruitcake for dessert.” He looked worried. “Do you like fruitcake? I know some people hate it, but Ip always liked fruitcake for the holidays.”

  “I adore fruitcake,” I said.

  He laughed in relief. “Wonderful.” Touching my hair, his eyes welled with tears. “How he would have loved you. Now let’s get inside.”

  We walked single file up the narrow sidewalk lined with shells, Dog bringing up the rear carrying about twenty medical books. The front yard framed squar
es of rocks—smooth pebbles in one, red lava rock in another, broken granite in a third. I wondered if Jordan Ippel had arranged the rocks and if he considered that art too.

  Aaron ushered us into the house. When he shut the door, the windows rattled. “The dining room’s through there. Help yourself to the grub, and I’ll get the doc. He’s upstairs with Ip now.”

  “Should I go with you?” Dog asked.

  Aaron shook his head. “Time enough to be briefed on your duties after you’ve eaten.”

  I hung my bag on a hat rack made of twisted wood and topped with what looked like ibex horns spiraling in every direction. Two black umbrellas, a shapeless beachcomber’s hat and a pair of binoculars dangled from other horns.

  Old hands at foraging, we descended on the table and the platter of baguette sandwiches stuffed with balsamic-drenched brie and grapes. A slow cooker filled with tomato basil soup sat on the sideboard. The fruitcake stood on the opposite end, poised regally beneath a glass dome.

  The table looked like something from a medieval castle—long, weathered, and scored as if with sabers and stray cannon balls. The sideboard top and the counters in the kitchen were a mottled red granite that started me thinking again about bloodstains and vampires.

  The dining room flowed into the kitchen, where the far wall was half appliances and half glass with a sliding door. I’d dipped into the soup when I saw a light flash in the shadowed yard.

  I froze but Kat, who’d seen it too, moved fast. Dog leapt from his chair, seconds too slow to stop her. Kat found a light switch beside the glass door and illuminated the yard.

  A scarecrow of a man stood stock still in the middle of a vegetable patch, a wicked long knife in one hand, a flashlight in the other, and a gunnysack at his feet.

  Dog on her heels, Kat yanked open the door and flew into the yard, holding a cheese spreader threateningly. Feeling helpless, I stood at the door, clutching my soup spoon.