AFTER RYAN LEFT, I ALLOWED MYSELF A HALF HOUR OF sniveling, then washed my face, changed clothes, and buried myself in work—my tried and true way to avoid thinking about things that upset me. Or, rather, I tried to bury myself in work. Unfortunately there really wasn’t much work that needed doing. I was already caught up on my paperwork, and I didn’t feel like driving over to my aunt’s house to get started on the arcane research I needed to do.
I finally went down to the basement and set up the next stage of the ritual to call Tessa’s essence back. This stage required more than an hour of channeling potency into the diagram, which ended up having the welcome benefit of tiring me out. I needed only two glasses of wine to fall asleep.
Yet, even exhausted, I still had chaotic and unsettling dreams of Ryan and Rhyzkahl. I couldn’t remember much beyond a few snatches of scenes—images of the two facing each other in arcane conflict, surrounded by demons.
I woke late, mood not improved when my coffeemaker refused to turn on. I tried a variety of methods to make the damn thing work—including yelling, crying, and cursing—but it still stubbornly refused to produce coffee.
I finally gave up and headed to the coffee shop and its overpriced product. Without coffee, the day had a good chance of sucking, and I really didn’t need any more suck in my life at the moment.
I FUMBLED IN the glove box of the Taurus for sunglasses, jamming them onto my face with one hand while trying to adjust the sun visor with the other. The mid-morning sun speared relentlessly through the windshield at the absolute perfect height to evade the sun-blocking powers of the visor. I had the air conditioner cranked all the way up, but the air it produced was only slightly below tepid and I could feel sweat trickling down my back. I’d briefly experimented with driving with the windows down, but even at ten in the morning the outside air was hot enough to make that pointless. At least the minimal air-conditioning wouldn’t turn my hair into a tangled mess the way open windows would. And since the day’s agenda involved driving down to Mandeville to interview Elena Sharp, I figured it would be best if I avoided arriving with bride-of-Frankenstein hair.
Sure, she can pop on up to Beaulac to lurk outside Brian Roth’s funeral, I thought sourly, but she’s still going to make me drive to Mandeville to interview her? And I was willing to bet that the AC in her car worked pretty damn well. On the other hand, the trip to Mandeville would conveniently keep me out of the office for the rest of the day. That was a win.
The drive to Mandeville was uneventful, and it didn’t take me long to find the complex where she lived. I pulled in and realized quickly that even though it wasn’t a three-story house on the shore of Lake Pearl, Elena Sharp’s new residence was by no means a mere apartment. From the gated entrance—complete with a security guard who actually checked my credentials—to the lushly landscaped surroundings, the entire complex screamed wealth.
I spied Elena Sharp’s distinctive red Mercedes, parked between a Lexus and a BMW. I stuffed my grungy Taurus into a spot next to an Audi, then walked down a path shaded with flowering crape myrtles to her unit. I rang the doorbell and heard the deep, sonorous tones vibrate beyond the oak and glass door, followed by the sound of heels on marble. A few seconds later the door was opened by Elena Sharp.
She was a few inches taller than me and wearing heels as well, which gave her enough of a height advantage that she was most definitely looking down at me. She wore a strapless mid-calf-length formfitting dress that molded over a flat stomach, narrow hips, and generous tits that I had a feeling were not factory originals. On her the dress looked elegant and expensive. On me it would have looked tawdry and pathetic. Actually, on me it would have looked stolen as well, since I figured it probably cost several hundred dollars. Not that I knew that much about fashion, but I could tell what was way out of my price range.
“Ms. Sharp, I’m Detective Kara Gillian with the Beaulac Police Department,” I said as I extended my hand. “As I stated on the phone, I’m investigating the circumstances surrounding your husband’s death.”