A Dark Homage Page 2

  Why am I spending time thinking about this nonsense? But Delilah knew why. Margot had uncanny intuition. And between Margot’s comments and Katrina’s visit—specifically, the mention of Michael and her mother and, like entwined vines, all the suffocating pain they represented—Delilah felt rattled.

  Delilah locked away the few files still on her desk. She glanced around at her cramped office. One large mahogany desk, a yard sale find, and two upholstered armchairs filled most of the space. A bank of filing cabinets lined one wall, rows of neatly sorted bookshelves the other. Matted and framed photographs of her father’s ranch in Wyoming were scattered about, roots in a crazy world.

  The entire room measured ninety square feet. Katrina had been right about one thing—the office was nothing to look at. Her employees shared one large office and, other than the two offices and reception, there was just a tiny kitchenette and an even tinier bathroom. But this place felt like home.

  Damn it, Lila, you’re getting sentimental. Cut it the hell out.

  Delilah flicked off the lights to her office and walked through reception. On impulse, she went back to her desk and grabbed the stack of resumes. She’d give them a quick glance. At least then she could tell Margot she’d considered everyone.

  And that the answer was still no.

  Night was falling hard and fast and hard on Delilah’s little farm, and Delilah, exhausted, wanted nothing more than a glass of cold white wine and a hot bath. She drove up the gravel driveway that led to the two-hundred-year-old house feeling exhausted. After running inside to throw on jeans, sneakers, and a tank top, she headed back outside to attend to the animals.

  Delilah rode the horses, brushed each horse down, and picked the mud out from their shoes. Chores finished, she leaned back against the small barn and inhaled the clean scent of fresh hay. If only everything in life were so simple. Millie, her rescue horse, an old brood mare, nuzzled Delilah’s hand with her soft muzzle, searching for the carrot that Delilah brought out to end each day. Delilah fished the vegetable out of her back pocket and watched the mare devour it. Millie had lived on the ranch for over a year, but it was just recently that the haunting had left her eyes.

  Millie’s treat got Spur worked up and he whinnied, poking at Delilah’s stomach with his nose. She stroked the white star on his head. “I have one for you, too, old boy.” Spur had been her childhood horse and the first thing she came back for when she moved north. He was an old man now, nearly thirty, but he had the spirit and manners of a young stud.

  “What would I do without you two?” she asked aloud. The horses, chewing contentedly in their stalls, simply stared at her with a mixture of innocence and old-soul wisdom. Delilah locked the barn gate behind her and walked briskly back to her house. She heard a meow and turned to see Mittens, the stray that had adopted the horses, following her. “You, too, huh?”

  Two dogs greeted Delilah at the front door. She patted them in response to their noisy hellos and went inside. She scooped a bowl of cat food from inside a pantry and placed it outside, next to a bowl of water. She gave the skittish cat a quick stroke, then closed and locked the front door. The dogs—Sampson, a small Terrier mix and Goliath, a Great Dane—sat next to each other in the kitchen, waiting expectantly for their own food. Delilah fed the dogs and then poured herself a full glass of Pinot Grigio. In her bedroom, she traded her jeans and tank for pale green cotton pajamas. After putting together a tomato and cheese sandwich, she sank into the sofa, sandwich in one hand, remote in the other. The time on her BluRay read nine-thirty-three.

  Her cell phone rang. Reluctantly, Delilah stood back up, the muscles in her legs and back complaining loudly, and picked up her phone, half expecting it to be Katrina begging her to reconsider. Not a number she recognized.

  “Delilah Percy Powers.”

  There was a moment of silence. Delilah was about to hang up when finally a soft voice said, “Delilah? Lucinda Mills. Do you remember me?”

  A face flashed before her, plain and pale. Delilah did remember Lucinda, a quiet, unassuming woman with extensive burn scars on her arms and neck. Lucinda had been one of Delilah’s first pro bono cases. Lucinda’s ex-husband Butch had been the worst kind of abuser: an abuser with power. A cop. Terrified that if she asked for a divorce, Butch would get the kids, Lucinda had put up with beatings for years. Desperate, she showed up on the firm’s doorstep convinced that she needed proof of the abuse to get her divorce and keep custody of her boys.

  At first, Delilah had said no. How could she sit idly by while a client was beaten? But Lucinda had insisted that they could intervene after they got photos. She just needed proof. They got proof alright—proof that Butch beat his wife and harassed the homeless, runaways, and prostitutes he encountered on the streets. When all was said and done, Delilah and Barb had the pleasure of giving Butch a tiny taste of the hell he’d spread like cholera in a developing nation.

  It’d been a troubling case, but in the end, Lucinda got her divorce and full custody of the kids. Butch Mills was fired from the Philadelphia police force and served time behind bars, where Delilah was sure justice was being served.

  That was three years ago. Delilah hoped that Butch was not back in Lucinda’s life. While she liked to believe that her clients were able to move on and create new lives, she was pragmatic enough to know that abusive relationships, like all relationships, were complicated. Some women could not resist the call.

  As though reading her mind, Lucinda said, “It’s not Butch, Delilah. Haven’t seen him since the divorce.” Lucinda paused. “But I can’t talk about this over the phone.”

  “Why?”

  “I just…can’t.”

  “Are you in danger?”

  “I…I don’t think so. I don’t know. Listen, Delilah, I can make this job worth your while, but I need to talk to you, explain everything. Can you meet me? Please?”

  Delilah looked at Sampson and Goliath lying on the cool stones of the hearth by a dormant fireplace. Content. Happy. A knot of anxiety twisted in her stomach. Lucinda sounded nervous, and the fact that she couldn’t explain the job over the phone made Delilah nervous. Either Delilah was stepping into a hot pile of manure or she was dealing with a paranoid and unstable woman. Neither option seemed attractive.

  Still, Delilah was not one to turn away someone in need. She could at least get the facts before making a decision.

  “Where do you want to meet?” Delilah said finally.

  “Center City. I’ll email you the location.”

  “Fine. Nine a.m. sharp.” Even as she clicked off her phone, Delilah wondered what she was getting herself into.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Delilah arrived to find Lucinda already seated. The woman was even tinier than Delilah remembered, with a slight overbite and brown hair cut into a short wedge that did nothing to hide the raised red scars on her neck. Lucinda motioned toward the seat across from her, a tight smile of recognition on her face.

  They were at a ubiquitous Starbucks on Sixteenth Street in Philadelphia. Center City was bustling at this hour, the day promising to be soupy and hot. Aromas of street vendor food—frying bacon, soft pretzels, eggs—mingled with the stench of damp and urine. Delilah had driven for ninety minutes to go the forty miles it took to reach the city from her house, then another fifteen minutes to find parking.

  Inside Starbucks, she looked around, scanning, out of habit, for exits and suspicious-looking people. Two women wearing business black and carrying serious leather briefcases waited for their orders, tense expressions on tired faces. A group of college students took up a table in the back, their conversation punctuated by fits of laughter. Satisfied, Delilah sank into the chair opposite Lucinda.

  “Thanks for coming.” Lucinda pushed a steaming cup toward Delilah. “Coffee. Black.”

  “You remembered?”

  Lucinda smiled. Warmth lit up her features. “You saved my life. I think it’s the least I can do.”

  “I didn’t save your life.”

  “Yes, you did.” Lucinda touched the scars on her neck absentmindedly. “You and my Aunt Miriam.”

  “Aunt Miriam?”

  Lucinda nodded. “It was her idea for me to contact you in the first place. She wanted to stay out of it, so I never mentioned her. After everything with Butch, Miriam took me and the kids in. She was a smart woman. Brilliant, even.”

  “Was?”

  “Was.” Lucinda tore at the edges of a brown paper napkin, rolling tiny twisted strips between her fingers. “She died.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Lucinda nodded. “She’s the reason I called you.”

  A tall black man sat down at the seat next to them. He pulled a Mac out of a saddle bag and spread papers on the table, beside the computer. Lucinda watched him before continuing. “Do you recognize the name Miriam Cross?”

  “The author?” Delilah said, understanding sinking in. “Miriam Cross was your aunt?”

  “My mother’s youngest sister, more like a big sister than an aunt. All the family we had. Only forty-nine when she died.”

  Delilah recalled seeing something online about Cross’s death. “I’m sorry to hear about your loss, Lucinda. But how can Percy Powers help?”

  Lucinda sat forward. Her words came out in an urgent rush. “Aunt Miriam was murdered almost a week ago. Beheaded.”

  Delilah thought about the headlines of the last seven days. “Then why didn’t the media mention murder?”

  “Exactly! Something’s going on! Press has been minimal, the police aren’t getting anywhere. That’s why I need help. Before Aunt Miriam disappeared—”

  “Disappeared?”

  Lucinda nodded. “At first I didn’t see anything sinister in it. Aunt Miria
m was…quirky. She often disappeared for periods of time when she was working on a book.”

  “She’d just leave?”

  Lucinda nodded again. “Miriam tackled some serious issues. Genocide, religious extremism, crooked politicians. She’d dig up a scandal and then include a thinly-veiled version in her novels. Along the way she made enemies. And she witnessed the worst of human nature. It had its effects.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning she was given to…moods.” Lucinda stared straight ahead, avoiding Delilah’s gaze. “Bouts of black depression followed by feverish activity. I’m sure a psychiatrist would have called her bipolar, but we just called her different.” Lucinda shrugged. “Like most artists, I guess.”

  So true, Delilah thought. Many gifted people struggled with internal demons. Being different was, perhaps, what made them special. The key was turning those demons into something productive, which Miriam Cross had certainly done. Delilah had been a huge fan of Miriam’s work once upon a time. Neither liberal nor conservative, Miriam pointed out bullshit, whoever the purveyor. A staunch feminist, she’d written literary novels that entertained and educated. But in recent years, her novels seemed rambling, paranoid.

  “Why did she disappear this time?”

  “That’s just it, I don’t know. At first I thought it was because of us. She wasn’t used to having kids around, and I was preoccupied…afraid Butch would try to get revenge. A lot fell on Aunt Miriam, things she wasn’t emotionally equipped to deal with. I thought maybe she needed a break.”

  Lucinda’s hands strayed back to the torn napkins, as though of their own volition. She frowned. “About eighteen months ago, Miriam said it was time for me to go out on my own. She found me an apartment, paid a year’s rent and gave me a five-thousand-dollar emergency fund. After that, we talked on the phone once in a while, saw each other sporadically. Then about a year ago, she took off.”

  “Did you hear from her at all?”

  “For a while. Her cell was disconnected, which was typical. She liked to remove distractions when she was writing. I’d call her house, she’d call me back eventually…or I’d get an email with a quick update. Like I said, I wasn’t too worried. She’d done that before. But then about three months ago, things really changed.”

  Delilah waited for Lucinda to continue. The other woman seemed lost in thought, her eyes reflecting loss, confusion and something akin to hurt. Delilah wanted to comfort her, but she knew silence would be more productive.

  Eventually, Lucinda said, “Aunt Miriam stopped returning my calls. A week went by, then two. When I swung by her house to see if maybe she was there, she wasn’t. In fact, much of her stuff was gone and her house looked deserted. Things not put away, dishes in the sink, office packed up.”

  “Did she normally take her belongings with her?”

  Lucinda looked thoughtful. “Not like that. She normally left the house neat. Like you would if you were just going on vacation.”

  “Did you eventually hear from her?”

  Lucinda shook her head. “I kept waiting. Eventually my worry turned to panic. I called her agent, mutual acquaintances. No one knew anything. I was going to call you…I should have. But I didn’t have the cash and I couldn’t ask you for another favor.” Tears trekked down her face. “I might have prevented her death.”

  Delilah reached a handout to touch the other woman’s arm. “Finding her may not have prevented her death. It sounds like she went to great lengths to disappear.”

  Lucinda looked unconvinced. She sniffed, wiped at her eyes with a crumpled napkin, and shrugged her shoulders. “I need answers, Delilah. Who killed my aunt? And why?”

  Delilah watched the barista, a skinny girl with three silver rings through her lip, while she mulled over what she’d just heard. A well-known, eccentric author is murdered and there’s barely a ripple in the news? There were holes, lots of them, and no solid leads. Where would she even begin? And how would Percy Powers be compensated? Delilah might be willing to forgo her fee, but this wasn’t a job she could do on her own. She couldn’t expect her employees to work for free.

  “Why Percy Powers, Lucinda?” Delilah said finally. “Murder’s not exactly our sweet spot.”

  “I know I can trust you. Miriam trusted you.”

  “Miriam didn’t know us.”

  “She knew about you. And she saw what you did for me and my kids.”

  Delilah shook her head. “I don’t think—”

  Lucinda’s hand shot out and grabbed Delilah’s wrist. “Please, Delilah. I want justice for my aunt. But I’m also worried about my kids. Until I know who was behind this, I won’t know if we’re in danger, too.”

  Delilah thought about Lucinda’s cryptic call the night before, her insistence that they not discuss the matter over the phone. There was more to the story than what she’d divulged so far.

  “What happened to make you so nervous?”

  Lucinda’s mouth clamped shut. She shook her head.

  “If you think I will even consider taking this case—and there are no promises—you had best come forward with everything. And I mean everything.” Delilah fixed her best Southern mama stare on the startled woman. “Now ’fess up. What happened?”

  Lucinda sighed. “Someone’s been calling my house. They don’t say anything and after a few seconds, they hang up. The caller ID says ‘unknown caller.’” Lucinda shrugged. “It may be a coincidence, but I have a bad feeling.”

  “When did the calls start?”

  “The day I learned about Miriam’s death. The police wanted me to identify the body. What was left of it.”

  Delilah knew how traumatic that must have been. But she also knew that Lucinda still wasn’t telling her everything. “You’re sure that’s it, Lucinda? Just those phone calls?”

  Lucinda hesitated. “And then there’s my son.”

  “Out with it.”

  “He swears he was followed on his way to school. May have been his imagination, he’s only ten, but it happened the day Aunt Miriam’s lawyer called me. Coincidence? Again, I just have a nasty feeling.”

  “Did your son recognize the man?”

  Lucinda shook her head.

  “Did the guy approach him?”

  “No.”

  “What did Miriam’s lawyer say?”

  “He told me that Miriam left me a sizable estate. But it’s frozen while the murder is investigated. In case…”

  “In case you’re the killer.”

  Lucinda nodded. Delilah took in the slump of her shoulders, the tilt of her head. While Delilah was sure a desire for justice and fear for her family were significant factors for requesting this meeting, she was just as sure that self-preservation was at work here. Lucinda was scared. And she her only support person was now dead.

  “You said one of her heirs. There were others?”

  “A nonprofit…Miriam left it a few million.”

  “What nonprofit?”

  “I don’t know. Miriam was involved with a number of charities. She had a thing for helping people. Tended to get involved.”

  Delilah considered this. If Lucinda was owed a sizable estate and the nonprofit was still getting a few million, Miriam had tucked away a lot of cash. And money was a great incentive for murder.

  “Lucinda, have you told the police about the calls? About your son?”

  Lucinda snorted. “Please. Why would I trust the police? They’ve never helped me before.”

  Butch. Of course Lucinda would have bad feelings about the police. Eight 911 calls over the course of three years and yet her husband was never charged. Never even taken into custody.

  “But this isn’t about Butch, Lucinda. Surely the police are investigating Miriam’s murder. You need to call them. They may know something that can help you.”

  “They say they are investigating. They asked me to keep things quiet, so I don’t jeopardize their work. Still,” Lucinda shrugged, “I’m not contacting them. For all I know, the police are involved somehow.”

  “The lack of press coverage?”