A Witch, a Fairy, and an Esper Page 2

  She was hesitant but finally agreed.

  I found the house easily enough and went to the door. A ‘I’m too-cool-for-you’ woman answered the doorbell. She was a female version of a hipster.

  Wonderful.

  I gave her a card and introduced myself and told her who I wanted to see.

  In a blasé voice, she said, “I’m California Skye Paulson.”

  I bit my lip and wondered what her real name was.

  Her bottle red hair was longish, the ends hacked at. It also had blue streaks in it. Then the rest of the ‘uniform.’ Oh lord.

  Yep. A nose stud. A lip stud. And long, dangly earrings, a different one in each ear. Her eyebrows were painted on in a strange shape. She wore a striped blue and white t-shirt with blue suspenders. Her ragged cut-off jeans were splotch bleached. She wore no bra and like me, she was fairly busty. Just like her husband, she wore heavy brown work boots. Oh…and knee-high dark blue socks. All of it was designed to look flea market or bought from a fifteenth hand shop. In reality what she was wearing cost more than I earned in a month.

  And then the tats. Flowers, stars, hearts. A dagger? Yup. On both arms. They weren’t quite sleeves, but she was on the way.

  They were the perfect hipster couple. I’ve seen these people on the streets and in clubs. Oddly enough, never in an office. I wondered where her money came from.

  She also had a dark bruise beside her left eye. That wasn’t fake. I didn’t want to jump to any conclusions. People did silly things and led with their faces. Trip over your dog’s leash, for instance. That one happened to an older gentleman I know. You’d have thought from the looks of him that he’d gone ten rounds with a kickboxer.

  She led me into the living room. This was almost wall to wall dreck. There were collections of plates, some weird-ass dolls, and rhinos of all sizes. The couch was in dire need of replacement as were the two tan, faux leather armchairs with rips in the seats. An obviously rickety coffee table was covered in newspapers and mail.

  “My sister has issues, okay?” she said. “She collects shit and she’s a pig.” She waved her hand around as if I couldn’t see it with my own eyes. “She spends every single penny she has on it and obviously nothing on her furnishings.”

  I nodded, afraid to open my mouth because of the urge to either fall down laughing or vomit. Was there something wrong with California that prevented her from cleaning the place? She wore expensive clothes and that told me she could replace some of this crappy furniture if she wanted. It was quite apparent that she didn’t.

  Then I realized how judgmental I was being. I had several tats myself and two of them were very intimate. I even had the so-called ‘tramp stamp’ just above my butt like the others you see. Mine was a golden eagle. Elsa loved it.

  I even inherited my house, so to speak. When my parents moved to Florida, they gave it to me. However, I was as dependent on the next paycheck as everyone else.

  Reel it in, I told myself. It helped when California said shyly, “You wanted to see me?”

  Before I could reply, she pulled up her t-shirt. “I have two cracked ribs and these bruises. He wasn’t trying to kill me; he was teaching me a lesson.” She pulled down her shirt. “When we met, ten years ago, he was pretty chill. Y’know? But in the last few months he started drivin’ for this guy and got like, real shitty. Y’know? Everything pisses him off. Y’know? So, after he beat me this last time, I took the kids and left. They’re like, at my mom’s right now since they’re too young for school.”

  If she said ‘Y’know’ or ‘like’ one more time I was going to scream. I’ll bet she would add an ‘s’ to ‘anyway’, too.

  “California, I’m so sorry,” I said honestly. “I have to ask. Now what? Will you go back to him? Do you want him to know where you are? I can’t offer any advice, so I won’t.”

  The utter contempt in her voice was powerful. She replied, “I will see him in court or,” and this scared me a little, “see him in hell, first.”

  I tried to calm her down and I think I did a fair job of it. From what I’d just seen of the fear and anger in her voice, I knew my original assumption about him was right. He was an abusive husband. Even while I was talking to her, I thought about that other call and wondered if I should try to find out who it was. Maybe later, after I got home and relaxed, I could work a little more magic and see what I could find.

  About to leave her was about the time when I got nailed hard with depression. Shit. That’s generally how it hits me; all at once from out of nowhere. I could be having a perfectly okay day then…I wasn’t. This day had already started to go downhill as soon as I went for my ride this morning. Then this. I had real, honest to goodness meds for it but I hated to take them. Maybe this time it would pass quickly on its own.

  It had been a while since I’d actually gone out for a drink or ten. After chatting with California and seeing the dreariness of where she was living, I decided tonight was one of those nights when I needed a couple of stiff drinks and a small crowd to help me get away from it all for a while.

  “Elsa,” I said when I called as I was driving back, “I’m going to Dewey’s anyway. I need a couple of stiff ones and you can stop with the evil thoughts right now. You’re the only person I need but a couple of drinks and chatting with Dewey is always relaxing.”

  She still laughed at me. “I know. You don’t need my permission. But you do like the boys on occasion and I’d hate to lose you to some young stud with a big…”

  “Stop that, Baby. I’m not going anywhere but there and then home to you.”

  Elsa could hear it in my voice. “Baby,” she said gently, “I can hear the depression. Come on home and I’ll help you over it.”

  Sometimes she could, other times she couldn’t. I knew she wasn’t a witch, but she seemed to be able to when time alone wasn’t enough.

  “Naah. Let me have a drink and then I’ll be home. Okay?”

  “Okay. I’ll see you later, then.”

  We talked more, drifted into silly phone sex a little and then hung up. No, I wasn’t going to pick some guy or chick up for a night of potential pleasure. Elsa was right about that; she was all I needed.

  Yeah, I know. Getting about half hammered because the day was shitty is a piss poor excuse to go drinking but I needed to relax. I knew it wouldn’t help my depression, either.

  Elsa had already gone home when I got back to the office, so I wrote some notes about the Paulson situation for my case file on the computer. When I was done, I left my car parked there and walked the two blocks to Dewey’s. As I walked, I continued to think about that strange call I received earlier. I stopped and looked in a store window and shook my head. Maybe sunspots were the right answer since I could come up with nothing else that made any sense.

  I sighed. This was one of those nights where I would have loved to have Elsa with me. Goddess how I loved the little vixen.

  Elsa St. Jermaine. What an amazing woman. She’s quite pretty now, I think much prettier than when we met, six years ago. She’d earned good money as a secretary and IT tech for a downtown company. But then something terrible happened.

  There was a party at a bar downtown. Things got badly out of hand when someone roofied her. She was lucky that she got away with only a broken nose, a broken right wrist, and some bad scratches. When I came along, I stopped what would have probably ended up with her dying. One thing led to another and a couple of days later, we were living together. It took possibly as much as a month for us to say that we loved each other. I thought it was sooner, but I didn’t want to push the skittish young colt.

  We opened this private investigation business together two weeks after I pulled her out of that deadly situation. I felt it had to be fate that brought us together. Both of us are bi and both of us had been in crappy relationships. Now? I couldn’t have asked for a better person to be ass over teakettle in love with.

  I walked the two blocks to Dewey’s and went in. This was my favorite watering hole in th
e entire Northwest. The bar had twelve stools, four occupied tonight. There were several two and four seat tables. Like the stools, only a couple were occupied. Dewey had photos of the mountains on the walls and a full-length mirror behind the bottles behind the bar. His ancient-looking jukebox played fifties music only.

  One of the anachronisms I found in here from time to time were guys from local grunge bands sipping beers listening to Frank Sinatra or Perry Como.

  “Hey, Dewey,” I said to the owner who was tending bar tonight. I passed several tables and sat on a barstool at the end of the bar, beside the server’s station.

  He nodded and said, “Jo. How’s th’ girls tonight?”

  I looked down. “They’re okay, I guess.” He’d seen my bare breasts more than once early in my drinking days, before Elsa. I looked around the bar. It was about a third filled tonight. I had been going to take a couple of shots of Kentucky’s finest but changed my mind. “White wine tonight.”

  He looked surprised. “What? You sick or sumpin’? You ain’t getting’ drunk? You know I’ll get you home okay.”

  “Naah. Elsa would come get me anyway. No, I thought about something harder but changed my mind. All I’d need now is for rain.” I shoulda kept my mouth shut because the second I said it, the dark skies opened up.

  “Shit. I was going to walk home, too. I guess if you’ll lend me a bar of soap, I can take a shower on the way.”

  He handed me a glass of chardonnay instead and laughed as he looked straight at my chest. Before Elsa, he’d taken me home more than once, undressed me, and poured me into bed. As I said, he’s seen my girls more than once, but he’d never once taken advantage of my condition. I don’t think he’s even copped a feel when he had the chance. Since Elsa came into my life, I’d been a very good little girl and didn’t drink near what I used to and never to that degree.

  “No,” he said, “You just sip this and by the time you’re done, the rain will let up. Probably be over with. It always does.”

  Nodding, I said, “You’ll be right, as usual.”

  Just like in a movie, he started polishing a highball glass. He held it to the light and asked, “So, Jo, how’s Elsa? Business? Ahh…is everything okay with both?”

  I smiled widely as I sipped. “Elsa is amazing! But then, you know that. I think I love her more every single day we’re together. She’s at home washing clothes, believe it or not. Watching her favorite French cop show. She’s trying to learn the language and is doing fairly good. As for business? Así, así. So, so.” I looked up into his tanned, careworn face. Dewey was a retired welter weight boxer and it showed on his face.

  I twisted the wine glass around by the stem. “I think I need to hang up this business and be a paralegal someplace. I have the degree for it.”

  He was honestly astonished. His hand froze on the glass and he said, “You? No fuckin’ way. You’ve been a private eye for how long? Ten, twelve years?”

  “Ten and I think I’m tired of skip tracing and spying on cheating couples.” I told him about the hipster from earlier. No names, of course. He wasn’t buying my whining.

  Dewey chinned outside. “Didn’t you score that hot BMW Z4 from one of those so-called skip traces?”

  “Yeah, last year. And yeah, the car’s damned nice. But this business…I don’t know, Dewey. I’m seeing some real scumbags in the last few years. That guy today. Jeeze what a shithead. It’s gotten a lot more dangerous, too. Every asshole and his sister is carrying a piece now.”

  “No doubt about that. The world’s gone nuts.”

  “That’s true.”

  We fell silent as he went to fill an order for Marcella, one of the waitresses. She’s definitely what you’d call a ‘babe’ and we’ve flirted some but never more than that. Tonight, she wore a vivid green crop-top shirt and tight black jeans. Her red hair was a mess, as usual, and piled sexily on top of her head. I’ll grant you she was sexy as hell but not for me.

  It didn’t help me any when she came back to the bar, bent a little, and displayed her breasts for me. She winked. “I can call my sister to come over and sit, if you’d like.” She couldn’t hint for shit.

  “Not tonight, Marcella,” I said. “I’m good.”

  She has a beautiful smile and gave me all of it. She snarked. “Elllllsa?” Being bitchy, she dragged out Elsa’s name.

  “Easy, Marcella,” I replied tartly. She was pushing the boundaries about the woman I loved.

  “I’m kidding Jo. You know that. Since I don’t see her, I thought I’d tease you a little.”

  Smiling at her, I backed off. “Gee…thanks,” I said.

  Dewey sent her to pick up some glassware from one of the tables. “She’s a hot one, our Marcella.” He was looking straight at her firm butt as he said it. His wife of almost forty years would slit his throat in the middle of the night if he gave a serious thought to sleeping with Marcella, as if that would ever happen.

  “Yup. That she is. Actually,” I drained my wine and set my glass down. “No more. I think I’ll go home and watch some French television, too.”

  This damn depression was a pain in my butt. This morning with that jackass in the truck, that strange call and then talking with California. On the other hand, I didn’t take any meds for it other than extra vitamin D and that generally helped me cope. That and Elsa. I decided right then I needed to be home and not here.

  Before I could leave or Dewey could reply, two big guys in dark blue sports coats, lighter V-necked t-shirts, and black jeans came in. Both wore black boots, and both looked around before they headed straight for me. From the looks of them, Dewey expected trouble. He reached under the bar for his phone with one hand, his baseball bat with the other. I’ve seen him in action with that bat and it was damned amazing, given his age and physical condition.

  Goon One walked up to me and asked, “You the one what finds people?”

  I was not the least bit worried about these two musclebound apes with their bad movie dialog. Goon One was white; Goon two, black.

  I replied as if I didn’t have a care in the world, “Who wants to know?”

  Goon Two reached under his coat but didn’t say anything.

  “Mr. Sato,” Goon One replied.

  Shit. For a guy who’d only been in Seattle five or six months, he’d already made his mark on the organized crime scene here. I’d heard from my contacts inside the police force that he was as brutal as he was ruthless.

  He’d been busted a couple of times but never went to trial. Witnesses tended to be elsewhere when it came time for trial.

  Or dead. I didn’t like that part.

  Being braver than I am, or stupider, I replied, “I don’t work for mobsters.” I think I pulled it off and didn’t sound nearly as frightened as I felt.

  Nobody else in the bar seemed to notice the tension over where Dewey and I were. Marcella looked over and knew this wasn’t good. I caught the fear in her coffee brown eyes. She returned to chatting with two women at a table but kept an eye on us.

  Goon Two spoke for the first time. “You need to listen to what he has for you. I’d suggest strongly that you do.” He looked down at his hand inside his jacket.

  Dewey abruptly brought up something I didn’t know he had. A sawed off twelve-gauge, pump shotgun. He said quietly, “Single ought buck, boys. Now why don’t you leave my friend alone?”

  Not only did he now have the attention of the two goons, but everyone in the bar was now watching, too.

  Taking his hand out of his jacket and spreading his arms showing Dewey and me he was empty handed, Goon Two replied, “We only want Ms. Palmer here to come with us. Mr. Sato will pay for her time. If she accepts? Then good. If not, also good. The outcome is that this bitch gets the first shot at this, ahh, situation.”

  He glared at me, but I didn’t back down. Nothing like having a shotgun pointed at the bad guys to give you a bit more courage. I also knew that the people in the bar were now tuned into what was happening. Dewey racking a round into
the chamber of that shotgun got everybody’s attention. The two women talking with Marcella brought out phones and begin videoing the situation.

  I was also curious. I knew I wasn’t the best PI in town, and I didn’t have a big organization behind me. It was just Elsa and me in the office.

  “Dewey,” I turned to him, “I’m going to go listen to what the mobster has to say. If I’m not back in ten minutes, call Lieutenant Albertson and let him know.” I stared hard at the two goons to make sure they heard me as I followed them out to the curb.

  Lieutenant Bob Albertson was one hell of a cop. He was big and tough and on occasion, fair. He was also my ex-husband. He is ‘ex’ because, among other things, he didn’t appreciate my ahh, switching teams from time to time. I’m bi which to me is no biggy. I thought he could deal with it, but he couldn’t. Being a witch didn’t help, either. He simply refused to believe that one at all.

  I always thought it was because he was raised in one of those ultra-right religious families. I don’t know and haven’t cared since we were divorced, twelve years ago.

  A shiny black Mercedes, of course, awaited me. Goon One opened the rear door and I got in, trying not to show too much leg to the other occupant in the backseat. I apparently picked the wrong day to wear my short tan pencil skirt.

  Mr. Sato scanned my legs as I got in. He wasn’t the least bit shy about it, either. Then his eyes worked their way up to my white blouse and smiled at what it covered.

  “Relax, Ms. Palmer. I do not screw round-eye women. However, you are quite appealing.”

  I barely acknowledged his left-handed compliment. “Gee, thanks. You have ten minutes, so I suggest you get to it. What do you want?” I made a point in setting the countdown timer on my phone.

  “Claude, drive for five minutes then turn around and let her off here.”

  Claude? It’s an unusual name but he certainly wasn’t my client. I couldn’t see him through the privacy partition, so I let it go.