The Bride Collector

10

“WHAT DO YOU mean you said no?” Roudy demanded, marching across the lawn. He frantically pulled at his goatee with both hands. “This is an outrage, my dear, they ask you for our help and you turn them down?” He spun back and glared at Paradise. “Your selfishness and insensitivity will ruin my reputation!”

I see you and your ghosts, Sherlock, and at the moment your ghosts are shouting at me so I will ignore them. Begone, ghosts, or I’ll dispatch you all with a word of power that lives deeper in me than in you. It sits on your shoulder like a butterfly, so watch out, Sherlock…

She thought the words as if they were water flowing through her mind. Fuel for her soul. Ideation was her lifeblood. She’d long ago exchanged hopeless attempts to stem her imagination for the challenge of focusing it.

… because that butterfly is truly a dragon!

“Your reputation doesn’t extend beyond this place, Roudy,” Paradise said quietly. “They want me to leave this place.” Her throat felt as though it had been tied in a knot, and if she wasn’t careful she would burst out in tears right here. “You know I can’t do that.”

Andrea flung her arm out, flushing red. “Yeah, you insensitive lobster! How dare you try to convince Paradise to leave us!” Her face twisted, pained. “That’s what’s selfish. All you can think about is your…”

She whirled to her right and yelled at empty space. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!”

Paradise didn’t pay any attention to the imagined voice that was upsetting Andrea. Likely a voice telling her something about how stupid she was, the most common of her auditory hallucinations. But there was nothing there.

I can’t, I won’t, it would kill me. I am dirt out there. I am cow dung on the outside. The thoughts crowded Paradise’s head.

The difference between Andrea’s hallucinations and the ghosts that Paradise “saw” was that Andrea’s mind couldn’t distinguish between real and imagined. Paradise could. Most of her ghosts were simply the product of an overripe imagination. Like the “ghost” she’d seen in the window while talking to the FBI agent. And the thoughts entering her mind now were not audible voices.

But on some occasions she had actually seen, not imagined, the so-called ghosts. Six times to be precise. Two of those times had been when she’d touched the dead.

They stood under one of the aspens on the south side of the compound, where Paradise had agreed to meet them when her meeting was finished. The space offered some privacy and a wrought-iron bench, which was now empty. Enrique wasn’t here yet-probably trying to coax a vixen into his bed, though they all knew that any hanky-panky had to be approved by Allison.

Roudy pushed a pair of round, lensless spectacles up the bridge of his nose. “I may do my work here, but don’t think for a moment that the entire investigative community doesn’t benefit from my methods. They likely study my cases in every university and FBI field office in the country. Not to mention the English, the French, the Israelis… all of them! They need me. Don’t try to steal that from them.”

Andrea was in a tizzy. “You can’t leave me, Paradise!”

“I’m not leaving. And I’m not saying that your work isn’t appreciated on the outside, Roudy. But are you willing to go out there yourself? Would you leave this place and start lecturing in the universities?”

“If I were called upon, of course! Each of us must rise to the challenge. I have no doubt that the day will come when they ask me to travel to Moscow or London to put a halt to the dastardly deeds of some impervious rogue who’s eluded the best of the best.” He was breathing heavy, agitated. “This is your call to greatness, Paradise. Rise!” He made a fist and shook it as if he were a general trying to rouse the troops.

I can’t, I’m a bug out there. I’m dead. I died out there! Panic crowded her mind. “You rise. You’re so smart, go out there and solve this case for them, why not?”

“Because you stole my thunder! Now they want you. It’s a betrayal at the highest level. Treachery! Maybe treason, even!”

“Don’t be stupid.”

Roudy looked hurt. “You’re accusing me of being stupid?”

“No. I said don’t be stupid. Don’t accuse me of treason, this has nothing to do with treason. I have agoraphobia. I would fall apart if I set a foot out of the place, you know that. Why are you demanding I do something that I can’t do? Does Allison encourage you to quit being Sherlock? No. So stop demanding that I do something I can’t do.”

Roudy stared back at Paradise for a moment, then humphed and turned his back on both of them, crossing his arms. The argument stalled.

She was only like this when fear pushed her to the edge. She hated confrontation, hated that she felt like she had to yell at Roudy, hated that Andrea was crying. Hated that she’d come off so strong with Brad Raines.

Her mind was back in the room with him.

You’re a handsome man, Brad, too good looking for your own good or my good, because it means I’ll never measure up in your eyes, which in turn means you’re here for you, not for me. You want to use me, then dismiss me. I’m just a monkey in your zoo to do some tricks. Toss me a banana and I’ll jump up and down. Do you want to kiss the monkey, Mr. Raines?

The last thought made her blink.

“I don’t like it,” Roudy said. “You should have insisted that I meet with you. This would have all turned out differently if I’d been there to protect you.”

Andrea jumped to her feet. “He made a pass at you, didn’t he, Paradise?”

You’re the beauty queen, Andrea. You’re the one they all want. They all mistake your smooth skin and long blond hair and green eyes and full lips and painted nails and slim figure for beauty, and they all want to kiss you. You’re their monkey, you rather than me.

“I knew it!” Andrea cried, tensing as if to spring into the air. “What did I tell you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. He did nothing remotely similar.”

“Because he knows he’s outclassed,” Enrique announced, walking up from behind. He stopped next to Roudy and winked at Paradise. “But if you like I could give you a few pointers, teach you how to help the man feel more at ease with your femininity.”

“She doesn’t need your nonsense,” Andrea snapped. “She needs to push that man as far away as possible before he has his way. I told you all this would happen, don’t say that I didn’t warn you.”

“Mr. Raines didn’t do anything of the sort,” Paradise said. “He was a perfect gentleman.”

Andrea wagged a manicured, red-nailed finger at her. “Never trust a perfect gentleman.”

“Nonsense,” Enrique objected. “You’re suggesting no one trust me?”

“You’re all driving me crazy!” Roudy said, turning around from his pouting. “This isn’t about men and women and all that rubbish, so will you all please try to control yourselves? The point is quite simple. We have to make a decision quickly, before it’s too late.”

Enrique’s brow arched. “Before what’s too late?”

“The FBI, Mr. Brad Raines approached us this morning and mistakenly asked the wrong person’s assistance in tackling a case. They asked Paradise to go with them to examine the body of a victim, the Bride Collector’s fifth victim. But”-he politely motioned to Paradise-“our friendly ghost buster, who insists she’s not in any way mentally unstable, by the way, panicked. Evidently she’s too mentally stable to overcome her agoraphobia for the sake of the Bride Collector’s next victim. So now the FBI has left and another girl will be dead shortly. Did I miss anything, Paradise?”

You missed the window that leads to the perfectly peaceful space full of angels escorting me to my rightful place at the feet of the king who has called to his princess in white. Yes, Roudy, I am a princess no matter what I look like here.

“You missed that the FBI fellow is not to be trusted,” Andrea said.

Paradise pulled herself from her imaginations. “No, that’s not true, Andrea.” Why the poor girl was so fixated on this point was a bit of a mystery. Did she know something the rest of them didn’t? “Why do you keep saying that when I told you he was a gentleman? In fact, he seemed to genuinely care.”

“Because he will hurt you, Paradise. Trust me, men always end up hurting you. Do you know how many men have come on to me over the years?”

No, I don’t know, but I can imagine because you’re pretty and you are capable of letting them get close to you. Because when you opened the closet door your father didn’t put a shotgun in your mouth. You’re a flower in the trees, a rose for the bees, a star in the sky. And I’m the dried mud on the side of a cow’s rump as far as men are concerned.

“No,” Paradise said.

“They’ve come on to me a lot. They always get pissed when I break up.”

Silence. And?

But there was no and.

Roudy grabbed his hair with both hands. “Focus, people! Time’s ticking. Another dead girl.”

“So why don’t they just bring the body here?” Enrique asked. “Never hurts to have another woman’s naked body hanging around.”

Roudy slapped his shoulder. “Not appropriate.”

“You’re sick,” Andrea said. “Sick in the head. What did I say about men?”

It struck Paradise that Andrea was being overly obstinate on this issue of men. Either she really did know something about Brad Raines that the rest of them didn’t, or she felt somehow threatened by his request to see Paradise. Could it be that jealousy was subconsciously motivating her antagonism? Imagine that, Andrea jealous of Paradise!

She’d always felt completely out of her league next to Andrea, and no wonder, the girl was beautiful. Her antics actually drew men rather than repelled them. She was a safe toy in most men’s eyes-beautiful and alluring, yet too strange to consider for marriage. And she knew how to flirt.

Paradise, on the other hand, had never even thought about flirting. Yet Andrea was jealous?

“I think he can be trusted,” Paradise said.

They all looked at her, clearly not expecting the opinion.

“And I think that Enrique might be on to something,” she continued.

Enrique smiled. “That’s the spirit, my dear.”

Andrea shook her head. “I’m telling you, Paradise. And it’s not because I’m jealous. That’s not it. Guys like this steal hearts and you will be a heap of dog dirt when this is all over.”

“I appreciate the concern, dear. But Roudy made a good point, I have to help them if I can. And Enrique’s right, if they agree to bring the body, I’ll try to help.”

“That hocus-pocus is worthless,” Roudy snapped. “We need solid investigation, not ghost hunting. Tell him to bring the body to me, with the file.”

“You get the file, I get the body,” Enrique said.

Paradise turned away and started to walk toward the center of the compound.

“Where are you going?” Roudy demanded. “We have a girl to save.”

Paradise turned back. “No, Roudy. I have a girl to save. And no, Casanova, you can’t have the body, that is really sick. And yes, Andrea, I will be careful. Don’t worry, my heart isn’t going to be broken. He thinks I stink. Literally. And I probably do. The whole idea of it is insane. No pun intended.”

That settled them.

Paradise left them standing.