I glanced at the clock as Miranda came dashing into the room, a panic-stricken look on her face. "Mom, what do I do when the soup starts boiling?"
"Turn it down to medium and stir, unless you want to scrub pots until way past your bedtime tonight."
We were in for a real treat; Miranda was wading through the spring home economics unit required for all eighth-grade students at her school. This week she'd been assigned the task of preparing a three-course meal. Along with grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup, we were also having what appeared to be a pulverized head of iceberg for salad and a selection of Twinkies for dessert. She'd begged me to sign her slip without making her do the work, but I warned her that cheating students didn't get to cash in on their opportunity to go to Space Camp during the summer break. Since July was still several months away, she'd backed off immediately without a whine or the usual martyred-by-mom attitude she'd picked up the past few months.
"Then what?"
"Then when it's hot enough, we eat. Did you leave the sandwiches cooking in that skillet without watching them?" I sniffed. The ominous whiff of charred bread drifted in from the kitchen.
"Yikes!" She clattered through the swinging doors, and I heard what suspiciously sounded like a swear word, but I decided to forgo comment. Cooking was hard enough even if you knew which side of the bread to butter. For Miranda, every cooking class was a lesson in hell. She hated it, and I had the feeling that, unless something changed over the next few years, by the time she was eighteen, both McDonald's and Burger King would have another steady customer.
I peeked through the archway dividing the living room from the huge dining-kitchen area. "How long until dinner?"
She consulted her watch. 'Ten minutes. I'll go call Kip."
I shook out my purse on the desk and went through receipts, throwing some away and filing the others in my business ledger. After I finished stashing everything else back in my handbag, I picked up the handkerchief holding the figurine and unwrapped it.
The dragon had made it home in one piece. I took a closer look. No machine marks. Definitely hand-carved, with delicate patterns etched in gold weaving along the surface of the jade. The carving was so intricate that I could see every nuance, every curve was polished and glowing. My bet was that this was an antique. If my guess was correct, this little dragon might just be worth a whole lot of money.
Where had it come from? And what did it have to do with Daniel?
I wasn't a slouch with psychometry; I closed my eyes and tried to focus on the dragon's essence. A medley of changing patterns swirled in my mind, and I was about to lower myself into the flow to see what I could pick up when Miranda poked her head around the door.
"Dinner!"
Reluctantly, I unlocked the 6tagere, tucked the dragon in alongside the rest of my collection, and locked the cabinet again.
Kip came racing into the room, a pained look on his face. He'd been in the kitchen; he knew what we were having. With a shake of his head, he said, "At least she can't ruin the Twinkies."
"Thank heaven for small favors." I plastered on a smile. "Come on, kiddo. We're going to eat dinner, and we're going to tell Miranda that we enjoyed every bite."
AFTER DINNER, I punched in Murray's work number. One of Chiqetaw's finest as well as one of my best friends, Anna Murray had recently been promoted to detective, and both she and I were still trying to get used to her new status. "Hey, chickie, how goes it?" We hadn't had much time to hang out together since her promotion, and I missed her company.
She exhaled slowly, as if she'd been holding her breath a long time. "It goes, I guess." She paused, and I could almost hear her looking around to make sure nobody was eavesdropping. "Coughlan's on my back again. He's making sure all the kooks are referred to me; I haven't gotten a real case to work on in the month since I started my new job."
I knew she'd been unhappy but didn't realize things were this bad. "Kooks?"
"Em, I take calls from people who think their dogs have been possessed by aliens or the nosy people who are 'just certain' that their next-door neighbor is "that guy they showed on America's Most Wanted last night." Of course, the dude always ends up with a whistle-clean record, and then he blames me, not the drunken neighbor who turned him in. I don't know what Coughlan expects. My record's going to look like shit."
Coughlan. I knew precisely what he expected. He expected Murray to get fed up and quit. I'd heard a lot about him over the past month. Head of detectives, he was a member of that elite group of supervisors from hell. A big man with a big ego, he didn't like the fact that Murray was Native American or the fact that she was a woman. And he considered Tad Bonner—the chief of police who had been Murray's previous supervisor—his continual rival. Over a late-night gabfest with plenty of coffee and cake, Murray and I'd come to the conclusion that Coughlan wanted Bonner's job.
"Good ol' boys like to have their fun, don't they?" I let it go at that. Murray was convinced she could win him over, and nothing I'd said over the past month had made an impression. She'd have to figure this one when she was ready.
"So what's up?" she asked. I heard the shuffle of papers, then the sound of a soda being opened.
Of course she knew all about Daniel from the news at the station, but I told the story from my perspective. "It was'like an episode of The Twilight Zone, Mur." I was still running a lot of guilt over having played a part in his death, but she reassured me that I'd done nothing wrong.
"Even if you hadn't called out at that exact moment, the officers on the scene think that the van would have managed to hit Daniel. It was just a weird coincidence that you were there, Em. Don't let yourself get too upset over it."
"Thanks. I really needed to hear you say that. I've been feeling so guilty over his death." "Well, don't."
I asked her about the dragon, and she reiterated what Deacon told me. "In fact, it's probably safer with you than in our holding room. I like these guys, but we have our share of bad apples, and sometimes expensive things disappear."
Maybe she was right. I sighed. "Daniel seemed so lonely. Were you able to find out anything about him?"
"He was just one of a thousand loners, Em. We couldn't find a current address, and the one listed on his driver's license is out of date by two years. Landlord said one day Daniel up and sold all his stuff, packed up a suitcase, and took off. We couldn't find any sign of family, anywhere."
Somehow, her news didn't surprise me. When I thought of Daniel and his untimely end, the weight of the world seemed to settle in on my shoulders. His life had obviously been about as dismal as his death. I shifted the subject to a happier topic—the camping trip the kids and I'd been planning—and we chatted for a few more minutes before my doorbell rang. With a hasty good-bye, I hung up and answered the door.