Tarnished and Torn (10 page)

Carlos gave an impatient twitch of his head. “Seems to me we both know witches are as capable of murder, as well as a lot of other things, as others. Just because I respect your talents doesn’t mean I give you—or any other practitioner—a pass.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to,” I said, stung.

“According to the security personnel, there was a miniature pig running around at one point.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Gotta say, Lily, there aren’t that many pet pigs in the city.” He consulted his notepad. “Even fewer pigs belonging to, and I quote, ‘A woman with dark hair and eyes, wearing an old-fashioned dress and orange tennis shoes.’ Ring any bells?”

“I’d say the shoes were more saffron than orange.”

His mouth turned up, just barely, on one side. “How did your pig happen to be running around the gem show? You brought him in?”

“He was supposed to stay in the van.”

“Then how’d he get out?”

“I’m not sure about the details of his escape myself. But pigs are awfully smart.”

He nodded thoughtfully and resumed tap-tap-tapping the paper clip on the desk blotter crowded with papers.

“The timing strikes me as interesting,” he said.

“How so?”

“All the security personnel were focused on you and your pig, while back behind the curtains our victim was being pressed, as you say.”

I hadn’t thought about the timing. It finally dawned on me—he was implying that the ruckus stirred up by Oscar on the floor of the gem show might have served as a distraction.

“Inspector, I assure you I had nothing to do with any of this. Oscar had nothing to do with any of this. Think about it: Why would I want to draw attention away from the murder? I had met the victim only a few minutes before.”

“I’m not suggesting you have any connection to the victim.”

“Surely you’re not suggesting I have a connection to the murd—”

As the words left my mouth, a handcuffed man in custody walked past the Inspector’s desk, guided by a cop. He had a full head of snowy white hair, and wore a nice but rumpled suit. But what caught my eye were the numerous scars covering his face, his neck, his hands—every visible inch of his flesh bore the distinctive, shiny scars common to severe burn victims. He and the cop disappeared down a hall.

It had been a long time. Almost fifteen years since I’d last seen him; almost thirty since he’d abandoned me and my mother.

Declan Theodore Ivory.

My father.

I tried to remain expressionless. But Carlos was no rookie. He recognized shock when he saw it.

“When I looked into your history a while back, I learned that your father left the family when you were a baby.”

I nodded.

“And you were raised by your grandmother?”

“I lived with my mother until I was eight, then went to live with Graciela.”

“Any idea why your father left?”

I shrugged. “I was a baby, Inspector. Remember?”

“What did your mother tell you?”

“My mother’s explanation doesn’t bear repeating.”

“When’s the last time you saw him?”

“Many years ago. After I left Jarod, when I was seventeen, I searched for him.” A strange note crept into my voice, as it did anytime I spoke about my father. Even to my own ears it sounded flat, distant, as though someone else were speaking. “It took me a year to track him down to a small village in Germany.”

“And how was that family reunion?”

I pulled at my lip, looked around the station. I was hoping to catch another glimpse of him.

“Lily?”

“Unpleasant.” He had raged at me, demanded I leave. It had ended in an altercation, the details of which I couldn’t remember.

And that was the most troubling part of the encounter. I usually remember everything—for instance, I remembered the fight between my father and Graciela the night he left us. Only a tot, I had watched it all from my playpen.

But I couldn’t remember what took place between me and my father that night in Bavaria.

Graciela had warned me before I left in search of him that it was too late, that my father was already . . . lost. But I refused to believe it. I was sure I could track him down, that I could somehow save him from whatever trouble he had gotten himself into. Graciela had always told me that I was innately stronger than my father. And my powers, even at seventeen, were considerable. What I didn’t know then, hadn’t yet learned, was that temptation was stronger than either of us.

Power yields to corruption. So easily.

“He claims he’s not your father.”

“Ha!” I said, the humorless laugh wrested from me before I could stop it. “Seriously? That’s a good one. But . . . how did you connect him to me?”

“Your last name is unusual. When I asked, before he could catch himself, he seemed surprised to hear your name. Though he denied it, it seemed a bit too curious. So, you’re saying it’s him?”

I wondered why my father would have denied our relationship.
Gee, thanks, Dad,
I thought.
As if I don’t have enough abandonment issues.

“Is he somehow connected to this crime?”

“He’s a person of interest.”

“Why?”

“We got a tip, and a couple of witnesses placed him at the scene. We’re waiting on DNA results, so we’ll see.”

I thought about the cuff link I had found. If it belonged to my father that would explain why I had felt something from it, despite my typical lack of sensitivity to jewelry. Was it evidence? If it was, should I hand it over?

I was pretty sure Carlos’s answer would be an emphatic yes
.

But . . . I hesitated. My father may be scum, but he was kin. Even after everything that had happened, that counted for something. Perhaps it wouldn’t hurt if I held on to it a little longer, tried harder to read its vibrations.

“So you’re wondering if I used my pig to create a diversion while my father murdered a woman with an athame?”

“It crossed my mind.”

There was a long pause

“I thought we were friends.”

He leaned forward, elbows on his thighs. His dark eyes were intense and searching. “Lily, you’re part of a world I can’t fathom. I respect it, and I know a little more about it than my colleagues. But I also know I’ll never really understand that world. Frankly, I’m okay with that. Until folks start getting hurt. Then I have to ask questions, tough questions, and sometimes I have to ask them of people I like.”

“Ask away.”

“Could the murder have been the result of some sort of grudge between witches, something like that?”

“I have no idea,” I said. “I didn’t know Griselda. Until a couple of minutes ago, I didn’t know my father was in town. I don’t know what his connection to Griselda may or may not have been.”

“They both came from Germany.”

“True. As do a lot of people. Almost all Germans come from Germany, for instance.”

“But your father’s not actually German.” Carlos ran a hand through his close-cropped hair and let out a sigh. “Okay . . . I guess that’s all I’ve got for now.”

I waited for him to tell me to stay out of his case, like he always did. But this time he remained silent. Then again, I reminded myself, it wasn’t his case. Was it possible he was thinking the inspector in charge could use a little witchy help?

“Could I . . . could I see him?”

“Not at the moment. He’s here for questioning. But you might be called in for an interview with Inspector Leibowitz, who’s the primary on the murder. And Lily?” Carlos said with a slight smile. “FYI, Leibowitz isn’t nearly as open-minded as your old buddy Carlos.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything else, old buddy.”

Carlos’s eyes dropped to my chest. My neckline wasn’t particularly low, and this wasn’t the sort of behavior I associated with Carlos.

“Nice necklace. Opals, right?”

I nodded.

He pursed his lips slightly.

“You be sure to let me know if anything turns up from the gem show, or if you remember anything that might shed some light on this case. You hear?”

I nodded and stood. I peered down the hallway, where I had last seen my father.

Okay, I have a few father issues: Abandonment. Anger. Guilt. Fear. But despite it all, he was still my father.

What in tarnation was going on?

•   •   •

Back at Aunt Cora’s Closet, Bronwyn hustled out from behind her herbal stand, beside herself with worry. Hot on her heels was Oscar, his piggy hooves clacking on the wood floor.

“Lily, oh, my
goddess
! Conrad told us you were taken away by the police! Are you all right? Did you see Carlos?”

Inspector Romero had come by the store often enough that he knew my friends well. Though I liked Carlos, it seemed sad that not only had one of my first acquaintances in San Francisco been a homicide inspector, but we’d spent enough time together to develop a relationship.

“I did,” I said, stooping to give Oscar a kiss. Once more I wondered how much to tell Bronwyn and Maya about the events at the Gem Faire. Their being in the building while a murder had been committed didn’t seem worth worrying them over. My father being in town . . . that might be something to be concerned about. But what would I say?
Best keep on your toes because my father’s deep into magic and, oh, by the way, he’s kind of nuts.
I felt protective of them, didn’t want to expose them to disturbing ideas of demons and the like.

Then I reminded myself of what Bronwyn kept telling me: friendship wasn’t a one-way street. True friends didn’t just offer help; they also asked for and accepted help when they needed it.

Bronwyn searched my face. “You’re probably getting sick of my asking this, but is everything okay, Lily? Because I can’t help thinking something’s bothering you.”

“I’ve got a few things on my mind, but nothing to worry about at the moment. If something develops, I’ll talk to you about it, okay? In the meantime, I’ve gotten way behind on my bookkeeping. But before I tackle that, I want to get changed.”

“VCT?” Bronwyn asked, our code for “Vintage Clothes Therapy.”

“Full-on VCT.” I smiled.

After perusing the many options I found the perfect thing: a neat little ’40s-era seersucker jacket and skirt, worn with a simple tank. Its vibrations were jaunty, making me feel as if I were attending the state fair back in the day, and I hoped its devil-may-care brashness would help me adjust my attitude.

Now properly attired, I sat down at the counter to start the process of adding up the store’s receipts and comparing them to our overhead and inventory expenditures. I hauled out my calculator and files of financial papers, and started tallying receipts. Prior to opening Aunt Cora’s Closet I had no idea how much work was involved in running one’s own business. I could handle the long hours and lack of vacation and bottomless to-do lists, but the paperwork nearly drove me screaming into the street. It was even worse than the never-ending laundry.

Most frustrating of all, when it came to paperwork my witchy skills were useless.

My reward for finishing the job at hand was to go thrift-store shopping. Weekends were a prime time for folks to clean out their closets, attics, and garages, so Mondays were the best days to scope out the local Goodwill and Salvation Army stores. I always look forward to these trips: the serendipity of it; the possibility of what had been unearthed from old trunks, grandma’s attic, or a fit of spring cleaning. At Aunt Cora’s Closet we stock some very old items—true vintage clothing—but we also carry goods from as recently as the seventies and eighties. Polyester shirts with wild designs and candy pastels had become popular with the city’s hipsters, much to my surprise. Polyester doesn’t breathe the way natural fabrics, such as cotton, linen, and silk, do, and thus tends toward the . . . icky.

Happily for me, though, I wasn’t required to like, much less wear, all the clothes I carry in the store. We all have our favorite styles and eras, the ones that match our figures and personalities best. Bronwyn is drawn to the clothes of the late 1960s, while I gravitate toward those from the late 1950s and early ’60s.

I worked well for a while, deciding that paperwork was an effective way to get my mind off mundane concerns, such as a possible demon infestation and mysterious long-lost fathers who pop up when one is being interrogated by the police.

My father is in town
. Why? And could he really be implicated in Griselda’s death? I knew he was a rotten father, but this was something else entirely. What was going
on
?

My fingers hovered above the buttons on the calculator.
Dang it all.
My train of thought had jumped the rails, and I had lost my place in the long string of numbers I had been totaling. I didn’t know whether to blame my lousy math skills or my father’s lousy parenting skills.

Since I was already feeling bleak, I figured I might as well look up the
Malleus Maleficarum
. It turned out that the horrid tome was, indeed, available online . . . and a person could even search the document for specific types of torture and modes of execution. Unfortunately, I learned nothing new, much less anything that could help me understand what was going on. I succeeded only in making myself depressed, pondering the terrible things people do to one another.

I sat back in my chair and looked out over my shop floor. Saucy little hats with their midface veils sitting on a shelf next to the door, brightly patterned vintage scarves and the colorful strands of costume jewelry from the Gem Faire hanging from the wooden pegs that dotted the walls at convenient intervals, dozens of pairs of prim white, go-to-meeting cotton gloves buttoned at the wrists so they looked like butterflies pinned to the display table. Rack upon rack of flounces and lace, leather and cotton, evoked other eras, long-past romance and rebellion. The store was redolent of rosemary and sage sachets, and, underlying everything, the homey aroma of fresh laundry.

I felt my heart swell with pride. I had worked hard to make Aunt Cora’s Closet a reality, the old-fashioned kind of sweat-and-elbow-grease hard work with scarcely any magic involved. After years of wandering from place to place, continent to continent, it had felt so good, so
right
to settle down in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood with its history of tolerance and openness.

The thought that my life here might be at risk somehow because of my father’s arrival . . . It was too much to bear.

Plus, I might as well admit it: I was heartsick. Yearning for a man with deep brown eyes and a really bad attitude. Sailor, a powerful psychic, understood who I was and how hard it was for me to maintain the balance in my life between the normal and the supernatural. Or so it had seemed. He had rescued me on more than one occasion, and though for the longest time he insisted he didn’t like anyone, including me, his kiss proved otherwise. . . .

“Stop, Lilita. That’s enough.”
In my mind I heard Graciela taking my eight-year-old self to task. “
Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Witches don’t cry. Remember?”

“But the other kids are picking on me!”
I had protested.

“What do you care? You are the granddaughter of a
curandera
, the descendant of generations of powerful women. It is the future that matters,
m’hija
, not the present.”

I frowned. Graciela’s words hadn’t helped much then, either.
Focus,
I scolded myself. If I started thinking like that the numbers would never add up.

My affair with Sailor had been all too brief, and I hadn’t felt right since he had left, suddenly and without explanation. I was fairly certain he’d disappeared because Aidan, a powerful witch overlord and Sailor’s boss, had somehow banished him from the area. But a part of me, a tiny, lingering doubt, wondered if he had gone because of me—because I was just too hard to handle. I knew it was childish and self-pitying to allow my thoughts to go there, but . . . I couldn’t help it. What if Sailor had left for the same reasons everyone else in my life had? Because I wasn’t worthy of love . . . ?

The tinkling of the bell above the shop’s door interrupted my gloomy reverie. Maya arrived with two high priestesses from Bronwyn’s Welcome coven, Wendy and Starr.

“Wow, you weren’t kidding about the new jewelry. This is
awesome
. Anyway, sorry we’re late,” effused Starr. “Some of the coven sisters were helping with another fund-raiser for the women’s shelter. Maya kindly offered to move some boxes.”

“Not like I was given much choice,” Maya groused, but her smile belied her true feelings. “You know, you do-gooders have an awful lot of energy.”