Voodoo Dues

CHAPTER 3

Rene’s SUV was still sitting across the street from the bar when I arrived. I pushed the door buzzer chanting a mantra in my head, ‘Don’t look, don’t look!’ Lian answered the door looking more than rumpled. He had no jacket or vest on, his sleeves were pushed up to his elbows, his dark hair stuck up at odd angles like he’d been running his hands through it all night. He hadn’t shaved, the stubble looked like he was a quarter of the way to a full beard. Even his girly eyelashes couldn’t dent the masculinity of the morning’s look.

Before I could stop my mouth, I delivered a saucy, “Hellooo Dr. Cairn.”

The look he gave me said he got my meaning and that I was crazy for thinking it. “He hasn’t moved all night as far as I can tell.” Lian inclined his head in the direction of Rene’s grandson.

“That would be bad.” I chewed on my bottom lip for a minute. “Maybe we should ignore it,” I suggested. “Let someone else call it in.”

“We need to check it out.”

“We?” I asked. “When did I become your partner in checking if he’s dead or just has a really big pee bottle in the car?”

“Since you agreed to work for me.” Lian took my stubby hand in his criminally long and graceful one, pulling me outside with him.

I could hear the witness statements… a disheveled bar owner was seen dragging a woman wearing a Ramones T-shirt, the world’s oldest most comfortable Levis and fabulous Gucci pumps across the street to find a dead wanna-be pimp in the Bishop Arts District.

Lian rapped on the SUV’s dark-tinted driver side window. “He looks dead to me,” I said, straining to see in through the front windshield. That was a feat in itself considering my height. “Maybe he’s playing opossum,” I said, adding, “I hope.” under my breath.

“He might need medical attention.” Lian reached for the door handle, as I gripped his arm and tried to pull it away.

“Think before you open that door,” I said. “Imagine how Rene is going to feel about you, the man she sent him to watch, finding her grandson dead.”

“What if he’s not dead? What if he is in need of medical attention and we just stand here. How will Rene react to that?”

The door latch clicked open and one or both of us let out a shriek of alarm as the body started to fall out of the car. By the time it settled, I was clinging to Lian for dear life, my arms clutching his biceps, face buried in his back. If Rene's grandson had moved, I probably would have climbed up Lian's back in an attempt to perch on his shoulders.

Clearly there was no need for medical attention. His skin was ashen and blank eyes stared at nothing. Rene’s grandson was dead.

A black and white arrived fifteen minutes later along with a CSI van and a wrecker. One of Dallas' finest led Lian and I aside and took our statement. Honesty seemed the best path, so we both sang like Ella Fitzgerald, telling Detective Childs everything from Rene’s visit the previous day, to her grandson watching the bar and the two of us finding him dead.

“Do you think it was murder?” I asked the Detective.

“He's a Homicide Detective Figg,” Lian said. “I'd imagine...”

The detective cut Lian off with a world class stink eye and lit a cigarette. The smoke streamed out of his nostrils. “That'll be up to the Medical Examiner to determine.” He took an extra-long drag on his smoke. “Looks like he was poisoned to me. You folks have a nice day.”

The detective ambled over to the guys who were collecting the body with a little John Wayne in his walk.

“If he thinks it's murder, we're going to be suspects.” I said.

“We did nothing wrong, Figg.”

“Yea and nobody in the history of the world has ever been thrown in the pokey for something they didn't do.” I glared at my boss. “We need to find out who killed him.”

Lian glared back at me. “We need to go back inside and leave the police to their task.” I growled at him and stomped across the street. “Trust me Figg,” Lian said, following me. “No good ever came from sticking your nose into something like this.” He held the door open for me. “Detective Childs knows what he's doing.”

“What if the cops don't find the killer?”

Lian avoided my gaze. “A woman like Rene would never let that happen. You don't kill a Mambo's Grandson and get away with it.”

“What's a Mambo?” Something in me snapped, either my curiosity had reached critical mass or the dead guy outside was wearing on me. Whatever the reason, I slammed the door with a force that rattled the inset glass, the heavy ‘open’ sign banged against it. “If you don’t tell me what’s going on around here, I’m leaving!” I turned the ‘open’ sign to ‘closed’ and crossed my arms over my chest.

Lian looked at his shoes, then walked over and began polishing the bar. “That may be for the best.”

Okay, so he shocked me, but only for a second. “I’m not leaving your side until you tell me what’s going on here.” He gave me a look that said he thought I was being childish and went to his office. I followed him and sat on the desk. Childish or not I was damn well going to get the truth out of my tight-lipped boss.

After an hour of my sitting on the desk staring at him and following him everywhere he tried to go, he sighed in defeat. I almost did a happy dance right there. “I’m going to take a shower and change out of these clothes.” He rose and headed for the door. “You might as well come upstairs with me.”

I stopped in my tracks. “Um, Lian, that comment this morning just kinda popped out. Not that you’re not good looking, but I have a rule about being involved with the boss…”

He cut me off with a deep chuckle. “I’m offering to show you what’s going on,” he said, then exited the bar, and entered a door a couple of feet to the right of the bar entrance. I followed him up a narrow flight of stairs to a door, which he unlocked and held open for me. “I wasn’t always a bar owner, though I grew up in one very much like this one when I wasn’t traveling with my mother.” I was shocked silent by his apartment. It was as much Dr. Cairn as the bar wasn’t. It looked like a finished product on one of those higher end design shows that my landlady Esther was obsessed with. Cool and modern, the walls and furniture were pristine, but not at all cold. Grey walls, dark woods and modern furniture made me want to sit down and check out all of the cool stuff displayed around the living room.

“Did you know that I’m an anthropologist?” he asked, delivering me from HGTV. I shook my head. “When I graduated, I realized that no one in academic circles was going to take a second look at a spoiled son of a diplomat unless I had an interesting specialization.”

He led me into the bedroom that was dominated by a ginormous, cushy looking platform bed. “Being from Ireland, I decided to go with the native superstitions, the folklore of the country. I dug in, eager to learn everything from druids to the fae.” He walked into the bathroom and turned on the shower. “What happened then was the most astounding thing that could have.” He emerged from the bathroom and sat on the edge of the bed, he removed his shoes and socks, neatly folding them. “They were real, not just legend and hokum.”

I gave him my serious face. “Am I being punked?”

“I was approached by a woman who told me that she had information for me.” He looked up at me, maybe making sure I was paying attention. “She appeared to be a typical rural dwelling female. Though I was suspicious, I met her the following morning. She took me to a rented room over the local pub and transformed right in front of my eyes from the dowdy sort of farm wife to something else entirely.”

“By fae you mean fairy right?” He nodded. “You’re crazy or you’re yanking my chain.”

Lian ignored me and continued his story. “Her skin was luminous, her eyes were too large to be human…” his voice trailed off and he was quiet for several heartbeats before he began again. “There is no way to verbally do justice to the ethereal beauty of the members of the high court. I don’t know why she spoke to me, but she did, imparting secret knowledge of their race.”

He stood and shivered as if shaking off a memory. “I continued like a man possessed for fifteen years, not stopping with the fae, I found magical races, shape shifters, all manner of things that grace human dreams and nightmares. They all talked to me, my reputation preceded me and they were happy to trust me.” He began unbuttoning his shirt and I looked away, giving him some privacy. “Don’t look away, Figg.” He removed his shirt and I was stunned by his long, lean, deceptively muscular body. If someone had asked me to describe Lian only a few minutes before, I would have said thin, not skinny, but there was no obvious bulk to his physique, more swimmer than body builder. “I was introduced to a pack of shapeshifters of the wolf variety. By the end of our evening together, the leader decided that he liked me and wanted me as part of the pack.”

Lian pulled his undershirt over his head and turned his back to me. For a second I couldn’t breathe. Four enormous scars ran from just below his right shoulder, down his back and disappeared into the waistband of his grey pants. The skin was red and angry where the wounds had been. I could see puckered areas where the flesh had been ripped, not just cut.

He stood perfectly still as I came up behind him, spreading my fingers as far apart as they would go, I traced with my finger on each scar from his shoulder to his lower back. He trembled at the contact.

“My leather coat and fisherman’s sweater saved my life from what I understand. I didn't change because the claws didn't penetrate deep enough.”

You’re a pervert and a freak. I told myself, because at that moment, I had stopped listening and all I wanted in life was to push him down on the soft bed and run my tongue along each of the scars.

“So, I hope you understand now why I don’t care if Rene is practicing real magic or if she has zombies in her basement.”

“Okay,” I said, my voice a little shaky to my own ears. “I’ll see you downstairs.” I turned and almost ran out of the room. I did run when I hit the stairs, gulping the fresh air once I was out on the street. I felt like Will Smith in Men in Black when he first learned that aliens are real and he bursts out of the pawn shop door, noticing things that he never had before. I was waiting for a witch to fly by on a broom or something, anything to confirm that I wasn’t crazy for believing what Lian told me.

It took a while, arguing with myself about whether I should leave or stay. The self-preservationist part of me wanted to run as far as possible, maybe go see the folks in Florida, but the adventurous part which is frankly much bigger urged me to stay. In the end, I went back inside the bar, poured myself a double cosmo and sat down.

However strange and surreal the situation, I believed him against my better judgment. Oh yea, and then there was the bizarre scar fetish thing. It wasn’t the scars, I told myself. It was that amazing body. I mean, how do you hide a body like that under those boring suits all the time? I snorted in mock disgust. He could have said something… “Figg,” I imitated his clipped cultured tone, “I have a fairly muscular body under my clothes which some women find sexy.”

The door chimed and I nearly jumped off my stool. Lian entered the room and I felt my body relax in relief. My relatively uptight, academic boss was once again in the house. Woot!

“Don’t do that again.” I said “Ever.”

“Don’t do what?”

“Get all manly and wild looking, and definitely don’t get half naked while you’re at it.”

He smiled. “Alright.” I drained my cosmopolitan and went back to my bar wiping.

Two days later, a latte colored woman in full mourning attire, right down to the veil shrouding her face came into the bar. She handed me a folded piece of crème colored paper and left without so much as introducing herself. In the pressed wax seal, I could make out a figure in a top hat. The face kind of looked like a skeleton but I couldn't be one hundred percent sure.

“Lian!”

He came out of his office, stretching his arms over his head. “What is it?”

“Looks like a voodoo note to me.” I handed him the paper. He broke the seal and read it.

He buried his fingers in his hair. Not that it made a difference. His hair looked like that was all he'd been doing in his office. “It appears that Mrs. Champtillion would like for us to attend the funeral of her grandson.”

“No thank you,” I said. “I saw Angel Heart. There is no way that I am chanting and smearing chicken blood all over myself.”

He sighed heavily. One of those you don't know anything kind of noises. “I doubt you'll be called to do any blood smearing. The funeral is likely to be the same as any other you've attended.”

I had my own doubts about that. I'd been to very few funerals in my life. Most of those were only marginally Christian, involving lots of beer drinking.