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

  “It has nothing to do with fairy tales,” I growled. “I know somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody who had a Lazarus. Took the agency ages to get her out of it.”

  “Listen carefully,” Dog said sternly. “First—Ippel’s brain’s been permanently fried. He won’t be rising from the dead. Second—you thought Thomas might wake too.”

  I shivered, remembering the nightmares I’d had about Thomas rising from his coma.

  “It’s a sign you’re getting too attached, Les. Remember, he’s a patient.”

  I swallowed. Jordan had never been just a patient, yet for some reason I did fear him waking. “I don’t want him to die before Christmas,” I finally muttered.

  Dog smiled, tugged my hair, his one gesture of affection with me, and softly closed the door as he left.

  Jordan lay on his side. Instead of changing into my nightgown, I dragged my reading chair closer to the bed and opened A Christmas Carol, determined that Jordan’s final Christmas Eve would be spent with my family tradition.

  * * *

  Hours later, I shifted in bed for the hundredth time, having trouble getting comfortable against Jordan’s angular form. Maybe that’s why his previous wives divorced him.

  For that thought, I whispered apologies to Jordan’s neck, his black hair feathering in my breath. For penance, I sang every holiday song I could think of and any that mentioned birds. I thought of his topiary and the pelican stained-glass window and wondered if I’d ever find out the reason for his obsession with birds. Unanswered questions were the saddest.

  For someone brain dead, I thought Jordan seemed to enjoy A Christmas Carol. Reading it with fresh eyes made me think how his own ghosts of days past, present, and yet to come haunted Jordan. In my next attempt to find a comfortable spot against Jordan, the hour hand shifted past midnight.

  “You made it, Jordan. Merry Christmas.”

  Till that moment, although Jordan wasn’t just a patient, he had been a stranger. He’d been a financial boon and a refuge from Donovan. His friends had betrayed him, but his Abishag wife would make sure they paid for that.

  In the wee hours of Christmas day, Jordan became my Jordan. I could hear his heartbeat, so distinctly his own. I could see his soul in his paint strokes, in his topiary birds, and rock squares. In his friends’ memories, I heard faint echoes of my Jordan.

  As it had been with Thomas, I couldn’t be sure if what I saw and heard was the real Jordan, but it was my Jordan. At a little past midnight, I finally found a spot against my husband where I could relax.

  Flashing red and green lights from the neighbor’s Christmas lights shone through the window and reflected on the blank wall I faced over Jordan’s narrow shoulder. Afraid that the repetitive motion would lull me to sleep, I began to talk.

  In the long hours that followed, I told Jordan everything about his Abishag. I gave him my version of me. I did tell him about Donovan—the abbreviated, highly edited version—but nothing about my plan to get him back. I was still working on that.

  I gently broke the news to Jordan that someone had forced Harvey Kassem to make a copy of Indelible Beats and that the original was missing. I told Jordan not to worry, that I had friends on the case, that all would be made right again.

  I told him that I didn’t think the villain was Doctor Millerand, that I believed the story about the doctor’s first wife and that he seemed content in his second marriage with no reason for reproach or revenge. “Your doctor’s taking good care of you, Jordan. He thinks you a saint.”

  In the dim glow from a medical monitor, I saw Jordan’s jaw twitch but knew that was a random neurological thing, not him responding to flattery as a daisy responds to the sun.

  I found Royce unlikeable, and I hadn’t taken anything he said about Jordan seriously. I would have loved to nail Royce for the forgery and attempted murder of Jordan, but Royce had the perfect alibi—he was short. No way could he overpower a tall man like Jordan and inject him with heroin. And the man was a philistine like me. I explained to Jordan, “Mister Royce handled the business, and you handled the art. So it can’t be him.”

  Besides, obnoxious people are rarely killers. If I had my way, they’d always be the killer. Unfortunately, it seemed only fun people like Kat turned to crime. Insufferable people like Royce were more likely to be law-abiding, rule-followers like me.

  A wretched thing, but the only person big enough to kill Jordan and persuade Harvey to forge the painting was Aaron.

  The blanket slipped a little. As I tugged it over Jordan, I heard a muffled shout from outside. Not from the studio but nearer to the garage.

  My heart pounded loudly. Had Harvey returned? I hadn’t recognized the clipped yell, but that didn’t mean anything.

  As I fretted about whether to leave Jordan and find out what was going on, the glow from the backyard light being turned on illuminated the bedroom. I heard a sound I knew—the glass slider opening and footsteps running through the yard.

  Quaking, I crept to the window. Beneath the inky black jacaranda tree and light from the kitchen door, I saw Sebastian carrying someone. The angle was bad—I couldn’t see who. Not Dog, who was nearly a foot taller than Sebastian. I tried to remember how tall Harvey was.

  Touching Jordan’s foot as I ran past him, I stood at the top of the stairs. “Hello? What’s going on?”

  What sounded like cattle stampeded through the kitchen, and then the rarely used door from the kitchen to the living room screeched on its hinges.

  “Sebastian? Is everyone okay?”

  No one answered. I looked into Jordan’s room, but saw only his shape under the blanket. I hadn’t turned on a light—studies show that the comatose rest better in darkness.

  I bit my lip. I didn’t need the visitations of Christmas ghosts to frighten me. “Someone please tell me what’s going on,” I yelled.

  Dog suddenly appeared at the bottom of the stairs, holding his cell phone.

  “Dog, what’s—”

  He flipped the light on, and I gasped. His face was pale, his hand shaking, and he was covered with blood.

  I started down the stairs, not even realizing that I was moving till my feet hit cold wood. He glanced up and said abruptly, “Don’t come down. Stay with Ippel.” Then he looked at the floor again, speaking into the phone. “We need an ambulance at—” He gave Jordan’s address. “A female, age 20, sustained a blow to the head, loss of blood, and was unconscious for an unknown period of time.”

  Kat. He was talking about Kat. I sat in the middle of the stairs, feeling faint.

  Dog pocketed his phone and looked up the stairs again. “I’m going with the ambulance, but Sebastian’s staying here. Get back to Jordan.”

  “What happened?” I whispered, not thinking he’d hear me.

  He shot a harried look into the living room, but I couldn’t see Kat or Sebastian from my angle. “We don’t know. Kassem said he’d meet Sebastian at his granddad’s place across the street but never showed. Kat was supposed to wait in the studio for the delivery truck, but the driver knocked on the door, saying no one was there. I watched him move the crates and then signed the invoice. Sebastian looked for Kat. He found her—” His voice broke. “He found her in Kassem’s room in the garage.”

  Oh, Kat. What did you do?

  “Get back to bed,” Dog said, his gaze still locked on someone else. “I have to be with Kat.”

  Shaking badly, I pulled myself upright and returned to the bedroom, leaving the door open, figuring it would be better to hear than not. As I huddled close to Jordan, taking more comfort than giving, I listened to voices murmuring in the living room and heard the rising sound of a siren and then one vehicle, maybe more, braking in front of the house.

  Time crawled to the ominous hush of voices, tramping of feet and flashing lights in the backyard, the loud burr of voices downstairs galvanized into action, the clack-clack of a gurney’s wheels riding into the house and then exiting, the siren again. Still hours before dawn, I heard th
e last voice murmuring from the front room, the front door close, cars leaving down the street, an awful silence descending. Someone climbed the stairs.

  From the doorway of the bedroom, Sebastian whispered, “You awake?”

  I almost burst out laughing in a hysterical sort of way. “Of course I’m awake. Will Kat be alright?”

  “I think so.” I heard the catch in his voice. “There was a lot of blood.” He paused. “May I come in?”

  The rules in the Handbook say that an Abishag must remain alone with her husband through the night, so I said: “No.” Then I thought about Kat, and I said: “Yes.”

  He compromised by striding to the window and keeping his attention on the outside. I sat up in bed, my half of the blanket up to my chin, still trying to get warm again, my right hip pressed against Jordan’s back.

  “How did you get hold of Harvey?” I kept my voice low, my hand stroking Jordan’s hair, trying to soothe him and calm myself.

  “He called me. Got my number from my brother, Duarte. He said he thought the house was being watched, so he agreed to meet me at Granddad’s and come in the back way. There’s a beach access road behind the house.”

  The backyard light was still on, illuminating Sebastian’s tightly drawn face and the blood on his shirt. Kat’s blood. “He said he be there at 10. He never showed.”

  Sebastian rubbed his jaw, rasping in the silence. “I saw the delivery truck after 11 and Dog with the driver. I thought it weird that Kat wasn’t supervising, but I figured Harvey wouldn’t show up with all the activity, so I crossed the street. Dog told me he hadn’t seen her so I went looking.”

  Sebastian swallowed. “I thought Harvey and Kat might be in his room, maybe she found him and asked him to make another copy, a better forgery, of Beats. Instead I found her covered in blood. It took forever to get a pulse. She was ice cold. I thought she was dead.”

  “I saw you carry her into the house.” I kept my voice soft.

  He nodded. “I probably shouldn’t have done that. They say not to move the—you know, but the garage was freezing and so was she. Thank God, Dog knows his stuff, though I think it shocked him bad when he saw her.”

  He ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t think Harvey hit her.” His voice lacked conviction.

  “I don’t think he did either, Sebastian. Jordan trusted him. Stegner said he had an honest heart. Remember how Stegner laughed when Kat…” My turn to swallow hard. “…when Kat suggested that Harvey poisoned Jordan?”

  “Well, then, who?”

  That was the question circling my thoughts since Dog spoke to me on the stairs. Who had struck Kat and left her for dead?

  “The doctor, the lawyer, or the business partner,” I said.

  “Why those three?” Sebastian slumped tiredly in the chair beneath the window. “Could be others we don’t know about—an ex-wife, girlfriend, jealous rival, old enemy.”

  I shrugged though Sebastian couldn’t see it. “We’ll go mad listing random people. We should call the police.”

  “They’ve been and gone. They checked the garage, the studio and the yard. Obviously whoever attacked Kat didn’t stick around.”

  Would he come back? I clutched the blanket tighter.

  As if reading my mind, Sebastian said, “We’ll be okay. The police thought Kat got in the way of someone trying to steal one of Jordan’s paintings. Apparently the house has been burglarized several times, the studio too. Nothing taken. That safe in the studio is more secure than Fort Knox, according to the police.”

  “That’s why there’s nothing on the walls!”

  “Huh.” Sebastian looked around vaguely. “I hadn’t thought about it, but it makes sense. Did Dog tell you the fake Indelible Beats was taken?”

  I struggled to make sense of what had happened. “No. You think it was random, Sebastian?”

  “I guess.” His voice lacked conviction. “The police seemed certain.”

  Before I could say anything, he added, “I’d better make sure the doors are locked. I don’t know when Dog’ll be back, so we’d better take shifts with Jordan. I know you’ve got the night one, so I’ll get some sleep and spell you at six.”

  A horrifying thought hit me. “Sebastian, I can’t take care of his medical needs. I don’t know how.”

  “Don’t worry. I worked as a medical tech in the Peace Corps. My license expired, but I remember what to do.” He headed for the door, running a hand through his shock of dark hair again. “G’night, Les. Merry Christmas.”

  I whispered, “Merry Christmas.”

  I closed my eyes, but I kept seeing pictures of a bloody Kat in Sebastian’s arms. Who had attacked her?

  In my head beat the words, “The doctor, the lawyer, the business partner.”

  Then another thought struck me, obliterating the others.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Sebastian served in the Peace Corps? Really? Everything about the guy made me feel inadequate.

  A few minutes before six, he showed up with a steaming cup of spiced apple juice.

  I eased out the bed, absently squeezing Jordan’s shoulder. “Kat?”

  “I called Dog a few minutes ago. She has a concussion.” His voice was rough with fatigue. “She regained consciousness right after arriving at the hospital.”

  A large weight lifted. “Does she know who hit her?”

  Sebastian shook his head. “Someone from behind. She thinks. Dog says she’s still pretty disoriented.” Sebastian eyed a monitor and made a note on Jordan’s chart. “The hospital wants to keep her there for observation but if she’s still doing well by noon, they’ll discharge her.”

  I felt a rush of relief.

  Taking the mug into the bathroom, I sipped it before and after my shower. I dressed carefully in a Vera Wang cowl neck sweater—black shot with gold threads, palazzo trousers and a pair of gold ballet flats. It’s how I’d dress for Donovan, and I needed power clothes to confront a killer.

  When I returned to Jordan’s room, Sebastian had checked Jordan’s leads and hefted a bag of glucose ready to be hung. With the rising sun spotlighting him, he looked so tired that it shocked me.

  “Did you get any sleep?” I demanded.

  “Some,” he said. Taking in my ensemble, his eyes widened. Maybe he read something in my narrowed look, because he said nothing. I watched him change the glucose bag with casual skill.

  “Harv had some bakery stuff in the freezer. I set it out last night. There’s South African smoked eggs in the slow cooker, coffee, and fruit on the sideboard.” He smiled wryly. “Merry Christmas.”

  “What do you want to eat?”

  He stared at me, probably stupid with fatigue. I said, “I’m eating my Christmas breakfast with you and Jordan. What do you want?”

  His eyes were at half-mast, but I saw his lips twitch. “I’ll take some eggs and a slice of strudel.”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  The strudel hadn’t completely thawed, so I put two slices in the convection oven for ten minutes. While the dial clicked toward zero, the mantra in my head started again, “The doctor, the lawyer, the business partner.”

  Dog and Kat might be back at noon. I wouldn’t let them return to more danger. The distiller had said that marriage was a risky business, and yesterday we suffered collateral damage. I wouldn’t risk my friends again.

  Besides, I had Jordan, my Jordan, to protect. Someone had put him in this brain dead, off life support, going-into-organ-failure state. He’d get his final Christmas of peace, comfort, and joy if I had to arrest his killer myself.

  The doctor, the lawyer, the business partner.

  I made three phone calls.

  ***

  “The strudel smells great.”

  I set Sebastian’s coffee on Jordan’s nightstand. “I can’t cook, but I’m a whiz at re-heating. I like the eggs.”

  “My mother’s recipe. She worked in the Peace Corps too before going to college.”

  I remembered something. “
Isn’t that where she met your dad?”

  Sebastian grinned. “Yeah, so not an entirely good experience for her. Not that Dad’s a jerk. He’s a cardiologist, married to his work. She wanted a marriage like my grandparents had, and my dad didn’t have the attention span for it.”

  “Is that why you were in the Peace Corps? ’Cause your parents were?”

  He shook his head and then re-considered. “Maybe partly. I’d planned to major in anthropology and figured I could learn a lot in the field. So I took a year off and worked at a clinic in Paraguay.”

  He really would make some girl happy, but if he wanted a marriage like the one Thomas and Carol had, he was doomed for disappointment. Maybe I should explain romantic rationalism to him.

  As Sebastian finished his eggs, he yawned. Which suited my plans exactly.

  “Why don’t you sack out in my room? There’s an extra bed. I can stay with Jordan till Dog and Kat get back.”

  He rubbed his eyes. He wanted to sleep but didn’t want to leave me.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Dog and I trade shifts all the time. I’ll wake you if anything changes with Jordan.”

  He nodded. “I’ll set the alarm for 11 so I can start soup for Kat.”

  “Perfect.”

  When Sebastian checked Jordan before leaving, I touched his hand briefly. “Thanks, Sebastian. I still don’t get why you’re staying with us, but I’m glad you’re here.”

  He half-smiled. “I think that’s what I like best about you, Les—you don’t entirely get it. It’s what my mother calls ‘sweet.’” He kissed me lightly on the cheek. “Merry Christmas, Grandma.”

  Well, that was both annoying and disconcerting. As I prepared for my big moment of taking down Jordan’s killer and revealing his duplicity to Jordan’s friends, Sebastian said I was oblivious. Not a good sign.

  The three would arrive in an hour. I used subterfuge to get them to come, although Aaron seemed pathetically eager. I suspected he’d nowhere to go on Christmas day. Or maybe he suffered from too much eggnog yesterday. I would feel no sympathy for him, my number one suspect.