The Shamanic Detective (A Riga Hayworth Paranormal Mystery) Read online

  “You said you’d use a cloaking spell, not that you’d compel me again, manipulate time.”

  “Give me your hand.”

  “You can only compel me so far. If you do it again, I’m done, leaving.”

  “Your hand.”

  Riga hesitated, then stretched out her hand.

  He placed a single, dried pine needle in her palm, his fingertips brushing hers. She shuddered from the contact, cold as death.

  “This will act as a compass, guiding you to Darkwoods,” he said.

  “You’re not coming?”

  “Tell Darkwoods I have sent you.”

  He vanished, and there was a strange lurch, reality snapping back into place. She became aware of the night sounds again – cars driving past on the nearby highway, a woman’s laughter, drunken, raucous. The world felt wrong, harsh, and she felt a strange longing for Ankou’s return.

  She shook her head, taking a deep breath. She’d been elf shot, that was all, lost in melancholy for the world of faerie. Strange that a part of her missed it. The rest of her wanted to run screaming. She rubbed the hand he’d touched on her khakis.

  Swiftly, she unlocked her car and got in, slipped her seatbelt on. She placed the pine needle upon the dashboard. It quivered, and oriented southwest.

  She turned on the radio, hoping to shake her darkening mood. Johnny Cash graveled: Ain’t No Grave.

  Riga turned it off.

  Flipping on the overhead light to better follow the pine needle, she drove the car out of the lot and onto the highway. The needle didn’t act as a GPS, reorienting at intersections; its focus was Ankou’s servant, not streets, and several times Riga had to double back on a street which shifted direction, or a road she’d passed and should have taken. Eventually, she found herself driving down a street in an upscale tourist village. She passed a brightly lit three-story cabin, and the needle swung violently.

  Riga braked, reversed.

  Slowly, the needle rotated until it pointed directly at the cabin. It was a raised, modified A-frame, with decks on all three levels facing the street, and brown-painted wooden shingles on the sloping roof. The silhouette of a woman’s figure crossed in front of one of the tall glass windows on the lower level, obscured by semi-transparent white curtains.

  She parked in a guest lot down the block, and crunched along the path to the cabin. A low street lamp near the end of the drive cast the night in sepia tones, deepening the shadows between the cars. The snow bank hemmed her in, forced her to squirm past the vehicles – an SUV, a Caddy, and a purple Jaguar. Paranoia flared, and she rushed up the steps to the front porch.

  At the top, she blew out her breath, glancing back at the cars. More than one person in the house, and she didn’t know who she was there to meet.

  She knocked on the door and waited, teasing the pine needle in her jacket pocket with her fingers.

  Riga shifted her feet and something clattered – a saucer filled with blood-colored liquid beside the door. She knelt, shifting her bag upon her shoulder, and touched two fingers to the liquid. It was icy. She sniffed.

  Wine.

  It had the appearance of an offering – to the fae? She sighed at the waste.

  The door opened, and Riga was looking at a shapely pair of blue jeans. She straightened, brushing her damp fingers on her coat.

  A young, elegant black woman stood before her. Golden hoop earrings weighted her ears, and tugged long gashes in her lobes. She towered over Riga, a brightly patterned cotton turban extending her height.

  Riga stretched out with her senses, but detected no magic on the woman. She had a presence, but it wasn’t supernatural.

  The woman smiled, teeth dazzling, cheekbones high, and tilted her head. “Yes?”

  “Hi,” she said brightly. “I’m Riga. I believe I’m expected?” She stepped past the woman. Adult-sized shoes and boots lined one wall along the entryway. No kids, then. “Where is everyone? The kitchen?”

  A frown creased the woman’s forehead. “Uh, yes.”

  “Guests always end up in the kitchen, don’t they?” Riga moved down the hallway to a second, glass door, designed to keep the heat in. She pointed at it. “This way, then?”

  “Just to the right,” the woman said, hurrying to keep up. “Who did you say you were here to see?”

  “I’m Riga, Riga Hayworth.” She walked through the door and into a foyer decorated with southwestern-style throw rugs of a far higher caliber than those at her own cabin. To the left, a staircase ascended, winding to the second and third stories. “And you are?”

  “Zara.”

  “Looks like quite the reunion.” Riga pressed forward. Reunion was one of those nice, vague words that could apply to families or friends.

  Riga veered left, past an open kitchen and into a high-ceilinged living room with a stone fireplace. The lighting from the wrought iron chandelier was soft and low, and the fire sent flickering shadows along the wood plank walls and across the face of the elderly black woman seated upon a leather sofa. She dangled a glass filled with golden liquid from one hand, swirling it absently, the ice tinkling against the crystal. Her legs were crossed at the knees, and she bounced the top leg up and down, causing her hound’s tooth skirt to hike up her slender legs. The woman’s hair was gray and closely cropped.

  She gave Riga a startled look. “My God, you look just like... Who are you?”

  A voice boomed from behind her. “Riga Hayworth!?”

  Riga’s shoulders pulled up to her ears, and she turned. She knew that voice. “Sal?”

  Out of the open kitchen stormed a black woman in an earth-toned caftan, her dreadlocks flying about her shoulders. She had earth mama curves, magic, and mojo, and she halted in front of Riga, jamming her hands on her rounded hips. Her left ring finger was missing.

  Riga’s heart sank. Sal was a faerie shaman, a good one. The penultimate time they’d met, Sal had told her not to come back.

  Riga had come back. She’d had to. Sal had been her teacher, and once, her friend.

  And Riga had let her down.

  “Sal!” She pasted on a hopeful smile. “Ankou sent me.”

  Sal’s round face turned gray.

  The older woman on the couch choked on her drink. “Riga Hayworth? Riga?” She barked with laughter. “This a friend of yours, Sal?”

  “No,” Sal exploded.

  “Are you some sort of celebrity impersonator, young lady?”

  “No, ma’am, but I get that a lot.” Riga got it too damn much. “Sal, can we talk?”

  The older woman rose from the couch, and walked toward her, her gaze ping-ponging between Riga and the shaman. “But what are you doing here?”

  Riga scrambled for an explanation, but her mind ran on the same track it had been rolling along all afternoon, her brain a hamster in a wheel. “My fiancé was arrested for money laundering.”

  The woman toyed with the strand of pearls about her neck. “That handsome Donovan Mosse I saw on TV?”

  Riga nodded.

  “Oh, you poor thing. How awful for you.”

  “She’s not a poor thing, Aunt Lizzy,” Sal snarled.

  Riga studied the older woman more closely. Aunt Lizzy, was it? So this was a family reunion.

  “I needed to go somewhere the press wasn’t, and a mutual friend of ours, Ankou,” she looked at Sal significantly, “told me Sal was here. Sal, can we talk privately?”

  “I have guests.”

  “But I was just going out,” Lizzy said. “Don’t you worry about me. Zara, I saw a cute little bar just down the road, and I’ve been dying to pay it a visit. Why don’t we go now?”

  “But Aunt Lizzy, it’s late,” the taller woman, Zara, protested.

  Lizzy grabbed her purse off the kitchen’s black granite counter, and looped it over her arm. “Of course it’s late. Late is when all the fun starts. Now go get your purse and coat.”

  Zara’s lips tightened, but she shrugged in acquiescence, and left to get her coat, her footsteps thund
ering on the stairs.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Sal hissed, watching Lizzy.

  The older woman picked a piece of lint from her camel-colored sweater, looked discreetly away.

  Riga kept her voice low. “Ankou sent me.”

  Sal snorted. “We both know shamanism isn’t your... How did you say it? Your thing? What are you up to, Hayworth?”

  Breathing hard, Zara trotted into the room, fastening the clasps on her fur coat.

  Lizzy shook her bag at Zara. “Where’s your purse?”

  “I never carry one. That’s what pockets are for.” The young woman jingled a set of keys at her aunt. “And I’ll drive.”

  After the front door slammed shut, Sal turned on Riga. “You can’t have met Ankou. It’s impossible.”

  “Why? You know I have the sight.”

  “What I know is you’ve thrown away your talents. The sight is wasted on you.”

  And here. It. Came.

  Riga rolled her eyes. “Just because I chose not to pursue shamanism—”

  “Not to pursue it?” Sal’s eyebrows lifted. “Is that what you call disappearing for over a year, abandoning your training, your colleagues? I spent a lot of time personally training you. Do you know what some people would have given for that? And you just… pissed it away!”

  “Mea culpa. I’m sorry. But Sal, this is important, and I need you to listen to me.”

  “I’ll listen when you stop lying to me.”

  “Christ,” Riga snapped. “Ankou sent me. He gave me no choice in the matter, and believe me, I’d rather be elsewhere.” Riga grimaced, trying for control, rationality. “He told me you were in danger,” she said more evenly, “and I had to come and help you.”

  “Bull.”

  Riga took the needle out of her pocket, placed it on her other palm. She walked in a circle around Sal. The needle oriented on the shaman.

  Sal watched, eyes wide. “Oh, no...”

  “Ankou gave me this to find you.”

  “You... You really... Did you really see him?”

  “I met a fae who’s weirdly tall, looks like Father Time, told me his name was Ankou, and that I had to come here to help you... Darkwoods.”

  Sal’s shoulders slumped. “Shit.”

  “That’s what I said. So why does he think you need protecting?”

  Sal gestured toward the leather couch facing the fire, and dropped onto it.

  Riga sat, angling herself toward the shaman, and tucked one leg beneath her. She plopped her bag by her feet. “Let’s have it.”

  “Someone’s been sending me threatening letters. Ankou said he’d protect me, so I...”

  “So you...?”

  “I invited all the suspects here.”

  Riga stared, aghast. “You did what? Sal, if someone really wants to hurt you—”

  “I thought he’d provide real protection! Not you!”

  Riga smiled tightly. Sal was right; she wasn’t a bodyguard. “Point taken.”

  “I mean, why you, of all people?”

  But she wasn’t incompetent either. “I am a detective.”

  “A metaphysical detective, not a real detective.”

  “I’ve got my private investigator’s license!”

  Sal folded her arms across her chest. “Huh. So you abandoned shamanism to become a private eye? That is just sad.”

  “Look, I don’t know who or what you were expecting, but you’ve got me. So send everyone home, and we’ll figure out who sent you these letters. Have you got them with you?”

  “I can’t send everyone home. Zara and Aunt Lizzy just got here, and I’m expecting two more people later tonight.”

  “Then send them home tomorrow.”

  “No,” Sal said mulishly.

  Riga recognized the look. She’d seen it often enough on Pen, her teenaged niece.

  “What did the letters say?” Riga said, changing tact. “Why would someone want to hurt you?”

  “Not hurt me, kill me,” Sal snapped. “There’s a difference.”

  Riga sighed. “Sal...”

  “Oh, all right.” Sal stood. “If I’m going to tell this story, I need a drink. You?”

  “I’ll have whatever you’re having,” she said, relieved. She needed more than a drink. She needed several. She needed Donovan.

  “Cabernet okay?”

  “Yeah.” Always.

  Sal went to the kitchen, and returned with two wide goblets. She handed one to Riga, raised a glass. “Cheers.”

  Riga took a sip, raising an eyebrow. “Good stuff.”

  “Huh.” Sal stared determinedly into her glass.

  Riga waited.

  Finally, the shaman sighed and met Riga’s gaze. “My daddy owned a sportswear manufacturing company.”

  “Owned?”

  The fire popped.

  “Both my parents are dead now. The company went into a trust. It’s mine, essentially. I can sell it or keep it. But my two cousins and Aunt Lizzy get income from it as long as it’s in the trust.”

  “And if you sell it?”

  “Then it’s out of the trust.”

  “And you’re thinking of selling.”

  Sal nodded. “Not thinking of. I’m selling.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’ve been wanting to create a shamanic foundation for some time, and I’ve finally decided to do it.”

  Riga wriggled out of her jacket, and folded it beside her on the couch. “A shamanic foundation?”

  “Globally, shamanism is in trouble, especially in the developing world. I want to create a foundation that supports and studies indigenous shamanic practices, so they don’t die out. Look, my relatives have done very well off the income from my daddy’s company. We all have. And we all knew it wouldn’t last forever.”

  To Riga, it sounded rehearsed, repeated, rehashed.

  “And you think one of your relatives isn’t willing to give up the cash.”

  Sal tucked her chin. “They didn’t participate in the company. I don’t owe it to them.”

  “No argument from me. What did the letters say?”

  “I’ve got them upstairs.”

  Riga stood. “Let’s go.”

  She slung her bag over her shoulder and followed Sal up two flights of stairs, to a suite filled by tall glass windows and the scent of burnt sage. The lake was out there, Riga knew, but in the darkness, the windows played coy, revealing only the room’s reflection.

  Her lips curved in appreciation at the hardwood flooring, sueded walls, leather furniture, and king-sized bed with its earth-toned duvet.

  Riga wandered to the bathroom and felt a surge of bathtub envy: copper, claw-footed, heaven. Donovan would love this, she thought, then immediately shoved that thought away. It hurt too much.

  She walked into a small reading room on the opposite side of Sal’s bed, and stroked the achingly soft blanket folded atop the leather chaise, trailed a hand across the spines of books lining the walls. A lantern hung from the ceiling, casting rectangles of warm light across the Oriental rug, the small writing desk, the dainty chair.

  She returned to the bedroom, and looked at Sal expectantly.

  “The letters are in the right hand bureau drawer.” The shaman sat down on the bed, and jerked her head towards the wooden dresser against one wall.

  Riga went to it, observed the rattle and an antique-looking blue bottle, half-filled with ash and herbs. These were the shamans tools, and not to be touched by her. She pulled the drawer open. A slim packet of letters lay there, paper-clipped together. “Have you had these fingerprinted?”

  “And just how would I go about doing that?” Sal snapped.

  Riga didn’t respond, pulling a pair of latex gloves from her bag and snapping them on. She lifted the packet from the drawer, drawing an envelope from the top of the stack. It was cheap looking, the sort of thing one could pick up in a drugstore, and it was postmarked in San Francisco. The printing on the envelope was blocky, childlike, and threateni
ng.

  She sniffed it. Nothing.

  Riga lay that aside, and unfolded the letter. The words had been cut from newspaper and magazine headlines, and pasted to the paper. She whistled. “Old school.”

  “It may be clichéd,” Sal said, “but it’s still creepy.”

  The message was short and simple: YOU SELL, YOU DIE.

  The other two letters were variants on the same theme. DON’T SELL, OR ELSE. SELL AND SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES.

  “You sure this is about your father’s company?”

  Sal folded her arms across her chest. “What else could it be? No one’s tried to stop me from selling crystals at Mystic Treasures.”

  Riga nodded, folded the letters and put them in a quart-size plastic baggie. Mystic Treasures was a shop Sal owned in San Francisco. “Why didn’t you go to the police with this?”

  “Who says I didn’t?”

  “You said they hadn’t been fingerprinted.”

  Sal shrugged. “So, I didn’t. It has to be a family member, doesn’t it?” Her voice held a hopeful note.

  “You said you were expecting two more guests, but you only mentioned one other cousin. Who’s number four?”

  Sal shifted on the bed. “Martin sort of invited himself. He’s a manager at the plant. He’s been organizing the workers. They want to buy the business themselves.”

  “Are you thinking of selling to them?”

  “So far, they haven’t been able to come up with anything near what the place is worth.”

  “Have you found another buyer?”

  Sal studied her reflection in the window, adjusted the neckline of her caftan. “There’ve been a couple of solid offers.”

  “And if you sell to them, what will happen to the plant?”

  “I don’t know. The cash flow is okay, but it would be more profitable if the new owner offshored to China. I’d rather that not happen. For obvious reasons, so would Martin and the employees.”

  “And if the letter writer follows through, if you were to die, what would happen to the company then?”

  “Since I don’t have any children, the ownership would be divided among my Aunt Lizzy, and cousins, Zara and Derek.”

  “Sal, this is nuts. You’re in a house with four people who have reason to want you dead. You’ve got to call this off.”