Murder by magic: twenty tales of crime and the supernatural Read online

  Murder By Magic

  Edited by

  Rosemary Edghill

  PART I

  Murder Most Modern

  Piece of Mind

  Jennifer Roberson

  Jennifer Roberson has published twenty-one novels in several genres, including the Cheysuli and Sword-Dancer fantasy series and the upcoming Karavans saga. She has contributed short fiction to numerous anthologies and has edited three herself. Though the story’s heroine is indisputably not the author, she does nonetheless live with ten dogs, two cats, and a Lipizzan gelding and has frequent—if one-sided—verbal conversations with all of them.

  In the Los Angeles metro area, you can pay $250K-plus for a one-bedroom, one-bath bungalow boasting a backyard so small you can spit across it—even on a day so hot you can’t rustle up any sweat, let alone saliva. And that’s all for the privilege of breathing brown air, contesting with a rush “hour” lasting three at the minimum, and risking every kind of “rage” the sociologists can hang a name on.

  But a man does need a roof over his head, so I ended up in a weird little amoebic blob of an apartment complex, a haphazard collection of wood-shingled boxes dating from the fifties. It wasn’t Melrose Place, and the zip wasn’t 90210, but it would do for a newly divorced, middle-aged man of no particular means.

  Interstate 10 may carry tourists through miles of the sere and featureless desert west of Phoenix, but closer to the coast the air gainsmoisture. In my little complex, vegetation ruled. Ivy filled the shadows, clung to shingles; roses of all varieties fought for space; aging eucalyptus and pepper trees overhung the courtyard, prehensile roots threatening fence and sidewalk.

  I found it relaxing to twist off the cap of a longneck beer at day’s end and sit outside on a three-by-six-foot slab of ancient, wafer-thin concrete crumbling from the onslaught of time and whatever toxins linger in L.A.’s air. I didn’t want to think of what the brown cloud was doing to my lungs, but I wasn’t motivated enough to leave the Valley. The kids were in the area. Soon enough they’d discover independence, and Dear Old Dad would be relegated to nonessential personnel; until that happened, I’d stay close.

  Next door, across the water-stained, weather-warped wooden fence, an explosion of sound punched a hole in my reverie. I heard a screen door whack shut, the sound of a woman’s voice, and the cacophony of barking dogs. She was calling them back, telling them to behave themselves, explaining that making so much racket was no way to endear themselves to new neighbors. I heartily concurred, inwardly cursing the landlady, who allowed pets. She was one of those sweet little old widow ladies who were addicted to cats, and she spent much of her income on feeding the feral as well as her own; apparently her tolerance extended to dogs, now. Dogs next door. Barking dogs.

  Muttering expletives, I set the mostly empty beer bottle on the crumbling concrete, then heaved myself out of the fraying webwork chaise lounge with some care, not wanting to drop my butt through or collapse the flimsy aluminum armrests.

  The dogs had muted their barking to the occasional sotto voce wujj as I sauntered over to the sagging fence, stepped up on a slumping brick border of a gone-to-seed garden, and looked into the yard next door. When they saw me—well, saw my head floating above the fence—they instantly set off an even louder chorus of complaint. I caught a glimpse of huge ears and stumpy legs in the midst of hurried guard-dog activity, and then the woman was coming out the back door yet again to hush them.

  I saw hair the color some called light brown, others dark blond, caught up in a sloppy ponytail at the back of her head; plus stretchy black bike shorts and a pink tank top. Shorts and tank displayed long,browned limbs and cleanly defined muscles. No body fat. Trust her to be one of those California gym types.

  She saw me, winced at renewed barking, and raised her voice. “Enough!”

  Amazingly, the dogs shut up.

  “Thank you,” she said politely, for all the world as if she spoke to a human instead of a pack of mutts with elongated satellite dishes for ears and tails longer than their legs. Then she grinned at me from her own wafer-thin, crumbling, three-by-six concrete slab. “They’ll quit once they get used to you.”

  “Those are dogs?”

  Her expression was blandly neutral. “Not as far as they’re concerned. But yes, that is what their registration papers say.”

  “They’re not mutts?”

  “They’re Cardigan Welsh corgis.” She made a gesture with her hand that brought all three of the dogs to her at a run, competing with one another to see who’d arrive first. “I work at home much of the time, or I’m not gone for long, so I’ll try to keep them quiet. I’m sorry if they disturbed you.”

  I didn’t really care, but I asked it, anyway, because once upon a time small talk had been ingrained. “What do you do?”

  Abruptly, her expression transmuted itself to one I’d seen before. She was about to sidestep honesty with something not quite a lie, but neither would it be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. “Research.”

  And because I had learned to ignore such attempts, and because it would provoke a more honest response, I asked her what kind.

  Across the width of her tiny yard, the twin of mine, and over the top of a sagging fence that cut me off from the shoulders down, she examined me. A wry smile crooked the corner of her mouth. “You must be the private detective. Mrs. Landry told me about you.”

  “Mrs. Landry’s a nosy old fool,” I said, “but yes, I am.” I paused. “And I imagine she could tell me what kind of research you do.”

  Unexpectedly, she laughed. “Yes, I imagine she could. But then, we met when she hired me, so she ought to know.”

  “Hired you to do research?” I was intrigued in spite of myself; whatkind of research would a little old widow lady want of my new neighbor, who looked more like an aerobics instructor than a bookworm?

  “In a manner of speaking,” the neighbor answered. She eyed me speculatively a moment, as if deciding something. “Do you have any pets?”

  “A cockroach I call Henry.”

  She studied my expression again. Something like dry amusement flickered in brown eyes. “Sorry, but I don’t do them.”

  And with that she went into her shingled, ivy-choked box along with her three dogs and let the screen door whack closed behind her.

  I was morosely contemplating the quaking clothes dryer from a spindle-legged chair when the Dog Woman arrived. She lugged a cheap plastic clothes basket heaped with muddy towels. Mrs. Landry’s apartment complex hosted a small laundry room containing one dryer, one washer, and three chairs. Most everyone drove down the street to a Laundromat, but I’d always felt the Landry Laundry was good enough for me. Apparently for the Dog Woman, too.

  She glanced at me as she came in, noted the washer was available, and dumped her load inside. I watched her go through the motions of measuring detergent and setting the washer dials. Once done, she turned to face me. “I hope the dogs haven’t bothered you lately.”

  I shook my head. “You were right. Now that they’re settled in, they don’t bark much.” I couldn’t help but notice she was bare-legged and bare-armed again, this time in ancient cutoffs and a paw-printed sleeveless T-shirt. I hadn’t seen her in weeks, though I did hear the screen door slam from time to time and her voice in conversation with the dogs outside. One-sided. “You think a lot of those critters.”

  My neighbor’s eyebrows arched. “Sure. They’re good company. Smart, interactive…” She stopped. “You’re not particularly interested, are you? Don’t you like dogs?”

  I si
ghed. “They’re okay.”

  Her eyes examined me. “Mrs. Landry said you were divorced.”

  “Yeah. So?” I wondered if she was considering hitting on me. Then decided it was a pretty stupid thought: I didn’t look like much of a catch.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know it’s difficult.”

  I grunted. “You divorced, too?”

  “No. Never been married.” Something in my expression must have told her something. “And no, I’m not gay. It’s just not always easy meeting an understanding man in my line of work.”

  “Research,” I said neutrally.

  She shrugged. “More or less.”

  Unless she was some kind of sex surrogate, I couldn’t see what kind of research might scare a man off. She wasn’t hard to look at. “Maybe it’s the dogs,” I muttered.

  “What?”

  I hadn’t mean to say it aloud. “Well, some men don’t like dogs.”

  “And some dogs don’t like men.” She smiled as I glanced up sharply. “What goes around—”

  “—comes around,” I finished, and pushed out of the chair. My load was done drying. It was a simple thing to pull clothes out of the hot barrel and dump them into my plastic basket. Why fold?

  “Mrs. Landry told me you used to be a cop.”

  My jaw tightened, but I kept stuffing clothing into the basket. “Yep.”

  “But now you’re a private detective.”

  “Just like Magnum,” I agreed; too often I watched the reruns on daytime TV “ ‘Cept I don’t look much like Tom Selleck, and I lost the Ferrari in the divorce.”

  That did not elicit a smile. “She said you told her you walked away after a bad case. Quit the LAPD.”

  It was a night I’d downed far too many beers, and Mrs. Landry had knocked on my door to ask if I could help her with a leaky pipe underneath her kitchen sink. I’d managed to get the leak stopped, but in the meantime I’d talked too much.

  “It was time,” I said dismissively.

  Brown eyes were very serious. “It must have been a difficult decision.”

  I grinned crookedly as I gathered up the briming basket. “You don’t know the half of it.”

  She waited until I was at the door of the tiny laundry room. “Then maybe you should tell me.”

  I stopped. Turned. “What?”

  “The half I don’t know.”

  “Hell, lady, I don’t know the half of it. I just knew I had to get out.”

  Her eyes drilled into me. For some reason, I couldn’t move. Her voice sounded odd. Pupils expanded. “She said you saw in black and white. Your wife.”

  I stared at her, stunned.

  Her tone was almost dreamy. “That you had no imagination.”

  I wanted to turn my back, to walk away. But couldn’t.

  “That you lived too much inside your head.”

  Finally, I could speak. “Among other things.” My voice was rusty. “Are you one of her women friends?”

  She smiled oddly. “I’ve never met her.”

  “Then how in the hell do you know what she said?”

  She blinked. It wasn’t one of those involuntary movements, like a heartbeat, but something she did on purpose. As if she flipped a switch insider her head. “Have you ever had any pets?”

  It broke the mood. I shrugged, turned to go. “Not since I was a kid.”

  “Wait.”the crack in her voice stopped he. I swung back. She was staring at me fixedly again, pupils still dilated, and said in an eerily distant voice, “Your father killed your dog.”

  I felt a frisson slide down my spine. “Listen—”

  “Your father killed your dog.”

  “Because the dog had been hit by a car,” I said sharply. “He was badly hurt and in pain. My father had no choice.”

  “So were you,” she said. “In pain. You knew what he was feeling. You felt what he was feeling. The dog. You saw the accident.”

  I shook my head. “I wasn’t there.”

  “Yes, you were.”

  “I was on my way home from school. I didn’t see it.”

  The color had drained out of her face. She put out a hand to steady herself against the washing machine.

  “Are you sick?” I asked sharply. Or on drugs.

  Even her lips were white. “You don’t see in black and white.”

  I lingered in the doorway, caught on the cusp of wanting to go and wanting to stay. “What are you talking about?”

  “You see in color. Too much color.”

  I dropped the basket and made it to her before she collapsed. I hooked the chair with a foot, yanked it over, put her into it. She was all bones and loose limbs. She muttered an expletive under her breath, then bent forward. Splayed fingers were locked into light brown hair.

  “What are you on?” I asked.

  She shook her head against her knees. “No drugs.”

  I stood over her. “This happen to you often?”

  She muttered another expletive.

  “Look, if you feel sick, I can get the wastebasket.”

  “No.” She shuddered once, words muffled. “No, it doesn’t take me that way.”

  Alarms went off in my head. “What doesn’t ‘take’ you what way?”

  She heaved a sigh, sat up, pulled fallen hair out of her face. Her color was somewhat improved, but a fine sheen of sweat filmed her face.

  I’d been married; I couldn’t help it. “Hot flash?”

  She grimaced. “I wish. No… no, it’s just—something that happens.” She closed her eyes a moment, then looked up at me. “Would you do me a favor and help me to my apartment? I’m always a little shaky afterwards.”

  “Is this a medical problem?”

  Her hands trembled on the chair arms as she pushed herself to her feet. “Not medical, no.”

  I hooked a hand under her arm, steadying her. “Come on, then. We’ll take it slow.”

  She nodded. It looked for all the world like a rag doll’s head flopping back and forth.

  I took her to her apartment, pushed open the door, and was greeted by three highly suspicious dogs. I wondered uneasily if I was about to lose my ankles, but she said something to them quietly and they stopped barking. The trio stood there at rigid attention, watching closely as I got her to an easy chair.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Would you… would you mind getting me some iced tea? There’s some in the fridge already made.”

  The dogs let me go to the kitchen, but only under close supervision. I hunted up a glass, found the pitcher of tea in the refrigerator,poured it full. The liquid was cloudy, and lemon slices floated in it. I sniffed suspiciously.

  “It’s sweet tea,” she called from the other room. “No drugs, I promise.”

  I walked back into the front room with the glass. “You psychic or something?”

  She glanced at the dogs, who clustered around my legs, and reached out for the tea. “You’re a detective. Detect.”

  A chill touched me at the base of my spine. “We worked with one or two in the department. I never believed there was any merit to them. Their claims. Their visions. I never solved a single case using them.”

  She drank tea, both trembling hands wrapped around the glass. The sugar left a glistening rim along her top lip. “It’s a wild talent,” she explained. “It comes and goes in people. Very few can summon a vision at a given time, so it’s not surprising cops don’t believe what they say if they can’t perform on command.” She looked at the dogs. “We’re not a circus act.”

  “Research,” I said dubiously. “Paranormal?”

  She drank more tea, then smoothed the dampness from her lip with three steadying fingers. “Mrs. Landry asked me to read her cats. That’s how we met.”

  Readher cats. If she heard my doubt, she gave no sign. “Two of them were with her husband when he died. He was at home, you know. Mrs. Landry was out grocery shopping. She always worried that he was in pain when he died, that he was terribly afraid because he was alone.” Should
ers lifted in a slight shrug. “I did what I could.”

  I kept my tone as neutral as possible. “You read her cats.”

  “It was very sudden, his death. There was a moment of pain—he died of an aneurysm—but it passed. He was gone very quickly. He didn’t have time to be afraid.”

  “The cats told you this?”

  “No.” She set the drained glass down on the table next to the easy chair. “No. They showed me.” She saw the look in my eyes. “The same way your dog showed you, when he was dying. On your way home from school.”

  I opened my mouth to reply but found myself unable.

  “You don’t see in black and white,” she said. “You see in color. Ordid. Very vivid color, in a much broader spectrum than anyone else. They are the colors of the mind. But you’ve shut them down. I think you must have done it that day, because it was too painful to see from behind your dog’s eyes. Or else you said something, and your father told you it was just your imagination. Parents often do that when they don’t understand what the child is saying.”

  I murmured, “My wife says I don’t have any imagination.” Then I caught myself. “Ex-wife.”

  “Most of us don’t get married. Or don’t stay married.” Her tone was dry.

  “Us? You’re counting me in with you?”

  “Of course.” She leaned back against the chair, slumping into it. “Thank you. The sugar helped. But I need to rest now.”

  “You read me back there? In the laundry room?”

  “No. I can’t read humans. Not clearly. But there were edges… pieces.” The bones stood out beneath the whitening skin of her face. “I’m sorry. I have to rest now.”

  One of the dogs growled. Very softly. Almost apologetically.

  I didn’t have to “read” him to know what he meant. I took myself out of the apartment and back to my own, where I opened the bottle of single malt I kept for special occasions. The first and only time I’d availed myself of it was when the divorce papers arrived in the mail.

  Outside, I sat in the fraying chaise lounge and drank Scotch, remembering a dog, and a car, and the unremitting pain that ceased only when my father ended the dog’s life. But before that, in the final moment, I had felt the unflagging trust in the canine heart: the human will save me.