The Trouble with Twelfth Grave

She pinched her mouth together, then propped an elbow on a knee and her chin in her palm. “Mom is so much easier to con than you.”

I stuck a toothbrush in my mouth and worked up a good lather. “Honey,” I said through the foam, “everyone on planet Earth is easier to con than I am. You’re fighting an impossible battle.”

“Okay, then, what should we do? We can’t figure it out. We’ve tried and tried and tried.”

“Did you find out who has access to the supply room?”

“Well, no,” she said, thoughtful.

“Okay, well, that’s where I’d start. Find out who has access, then eliminate those people one by one by checking their alibis until you have a viable suspect.”

“Yes. That’s what we need. A viable suspect.”

She braced her phone against a tissue box, hit RECORD, and began signing everything I’d just told her. She stopped and asked, “How do you say viable?”

With a giggle, I signed it for her. She finished her message and hit SEND.

“Quentin can find out some of that today at school. I wish I went there.”

“I know, hon. Maybe next year.”

She shrugged acceptance and hopped up. “Can I call you if I have more questions?”

“You know you can, but there’s someone else in this building who’s a pretty incredible investigator.”

“Uncle Reyes?”

“No.”

“My stepdad?”

My very own uncle Bob had married my BFF and became Amber’s stepfather overnight, a role he cherished and Amber found safety in.

“Nope.”

She skewed her face in thought. “Mrs. Medina, the elderly lady in 1B who swears she was a spy in the Cold War and that she once used peanut butter to create a bomb to distract her enemies so she and her Chihuahua, the Mighty Thor, could escape from that prison in Siberia?”

I pressed my lips together to keep from saying something sarcastic. Since Sarcastic was my middle name, restraint didn’t come easy.

When I had a handle on my innermost nature, I said, “No, not Mrs. Medina.”

She finally gave up with a curious shrug.

“Your mother, hon.”

“Mom?” she asked, the doubt as visible on her pretty face as her nose.

I laughed softly. “Who do you think does all the behind-the-scenes work for me? Your mother’s a badass.”

She blinked, then seemed to warm to the idea. “My mom? A badass?”

“Abso-freaking-lutely.”

“Sweet.” She turned, beaming, and headed out the door. “Thanks, Aunt Charley.”

“Not at all, sweet pea. Tell Quentin hey for me.”

“Okay.”

“Oh, wait,” I said, leaning out the door. “What’s your business’s name?”

“Q&A Investigations.”

She paused and waited for my reaction.

“I love it.”

She twirled around and bounced out.

4

I once made a pot of coffee so strong, it opened a jar for me.

—T-SHIRT

I finished dressing, made a pot of coffee, and downed half of it straight from the carafe. That could’ve been why I saw it again. The dark gray swish. Before I’d officially met Reyes, he kind of followed me around but kept his distance. All I’d see was a black blur, but this seemed different somehow. Colder. Grayer.

I walked into the living room, opened a closet where the swoosh appeared to vanish into, then gave up. If it were dangerous, I’d know soon enough. Denial was a wonderful thing.

After pouring an actual cup of coffee, I checked email, grew instantly bored, and decided to check the news instead.

I was doing exactly that when Cookie walked in.

“Hey, pumpkin,” she said, but my face was glued to the screen.

I couldn’t believe what I’d found. “Did you know Penn Jillette and his wife named their daughter Moxie CrimeFighter?”

She poured herself what was left of the coffee, then joined me. “I read that somewhere. How cute is that?”

“Cute? Cook, it’s horrible. I mean, what if, when the poor girl grows up, she wants to be the villain?”

“That is a conundrum. Speaking of which, did you take my cupcakes?”

“Only four. I had to wake up Garrett in the middle of the night, and I needed an olive branch. With chocolate icing.”

“I don’t think Garrett would mind your waking him up no matter what time it was.”

“He pulled a gun on me.”

“But it never hurts to take that extra step.”

“Why’d you make them? Is there a special occasion I don’t know about? Birthday? Anniversary? Guilt over an illicit affair?”

“No, I made them for you. You’ve been … off lately. I thought cupcakes might make you feel better.”

“Cook,” I said, leaning toward her for a big fat hug.

She was wearing a crinkly sage-green outfit with a lime-green belt and scarf. Her black-with-a-hint-of-gray-striped hair was spiked in all directions as usual, but if it had been lighter, she would’ve looked a little like Elton John. His loss.

“Cupcakes make everyone feel better,” I said, letting her go. “Well, maybe not diabetics.”

“What are you up to these days?”

“What? Nothing. I had nothing to do with it,” I said, sure she’d already discovered my traitorous involvement in the case of the missing office supplies and the start-up detective agency.

Cookie had been concerned Amber and Quentin were spending too much time together, and encouraging the elfin in this new endeavor would definitely give them an excuse to do exactly that.

In fact, I wouldn’t put it past those two to have made up the whole mystery for that very reason. I mean, she had to know we’d be flattered that they wanted to follow in our footsteps.

“Okay, then.” Cookie sat quietly after that, sipping her coffee, until she could contain it no longer. “What the hell, Charley?”

“I’m sorry.” I bowed my head in shame. “I didn’t mean to. She was just so cute, and you know damned well I can deny that child nothing. She used her charm on me. It’s lethal. It should be registered on a weapons database somewhere.”

“What is going on?” She stood and began pacing. “After all we’ve been through together, after all the secrets we’ve shared—granted, you have a few more than I—but still, if you and Reyes are having problems, you know you can come to me. Hell, you’ve slept on my couch more times than I can count.”

“Like, three?” Clearly, she wasn’t very good at counting.

“And now you’re obviously having serious issues and—” She turned toward me. “What did you say?”

Uh-oh. My words just sank in.

“Nothing. I had my listening ears on.”

She pursed her mouth. “What did she do?”

“Who?”

“My daughter.”

“Nothing. I swear.”

“Charlotte Jean Davidson.”

Wow, that really worked. “Okay, I’ll tell you, but don’t say anything. She wants to come to you for guidance and structure. So when she tells you, act surprised.”

Cook narrowed her eyes on me, her expression one of absolute disbelief. She was catching on so much faster these days.

* * *

I explained all about Amber and Quentin’s new venture. Cookie took it better than I’d hoped. I think it was the part where I told her Amber wanted to come to her first, but she was worried Cookie would be upset about them spending even more time together—you know, beyond the whole every-waking-moment thing—so she came to seek my counsel because she thinks she’s found her calling. She wants to do what her mother does.

That pretty much clinched it. Amber so owed me.

“And the rest,” I said, rising to hunt down my boots, “I’ll tell you at the office. I’ve invited the whole gang.”

She’d started for the door, but she stopped and turned. “It’s that bad?”

I wrested a boot out from under Sophie, my couch, and slipped it on. Without looking back at Cookie, I said, “Yes, sadly, it is.”

We walked to the office together since it was only about fifty feet from the front door of our apartment building. But we walked in silence, she in thought and me in a state of panic. I didn’t let it show, though. I’d essentially lost my husband, his body taken over by a deity I knew nothing about. Was he volatile? That much seemed a given, but was he cruel? Was he malevolent? Only time would tell, but time was not something we had a lot of. If he turned out to be everything we feared, we needed to capture him. Period.

Davidson Investigations, not to be confused with Q&A Investigations, sat on the second floor of a historic brick building on Central, right across from the beautiful campus of the University of New Mexico. The first floor housed Reyes’s bar and grill, Calamity’s. My dad, who’d owned the bar before Reyes bought it, had called it Calamity’s after yours truly. No clue why. Chaos rarely followed me.