Leda’s eyes went wide, and she went stiff. She stopped breathing for a few seconds.
Grady agreed. “Nah, I hear ya. It’s a competitive world. Hey… hey, Leda, you all right?” He nudged her with the side of his arm.
She was fine. She was just distracted. A vivid white light was creeping into the edge of her vision.
Niki put her hand on Leda’s wrist. “You okay, babe?”
“I’m fine!” she said, too loudly. Everyone in the café area turned to look at her, and she cringed.
“Sorry…” she said more quietly. “Sorry, everyone. But yes,” she added to Grady and Niki. “I’m all right. I, um… I thought I was about to sneeze.”
“A useful kind of sneeze?” Niki leaned in.
Grady leaned in, too. “A regular sneeze, I’m sure.” He took one last look at his notes, slapped the book shut, and tucked it into his pocket. He folded his hands on the table. “Now, once more, for the record, where were you again when the murders were committed?”
“My stepbrother was killed in a car wreck a few days before. I was at his funeral in Tacoma.”
“I realize it’s been a while, but I’m sorry for your loss. And, Mr. Keyes, I want to thank you again for your time. I know you don’t have to meet us like this, and you’ve been a big help.”
“I have?”
Grady eyed Leda with concern.
“From the standpoint of updating our records, absolutely. You’ve been a big help, and… and…”
Leda was already standing up, and Niki was right behind her—pushing her chair back with the plastic-booted foot she was dragging around behind herself.
“Thank you,” he finished awkwardly. With a brief handshake, he followed the women back out of the bookstore and into the parking lot.
By the time he caught up to them, Leda was doubled over—catching her breath. Her head was throbbing and there was a weird yellow halo around her vision that was so bright she could hardly see out of one eye.
“Hey, hey, Leda,” he said. “Look at me.”
“I can’t. It’s too hard.” She squinted in his general direction, trying to make out the shape of his face.
“What happened in there? Did you get a flash? Did it tell you anything good? Do you think he’s our guy? Are… are you going to be okay?”
“I think I’m having an ocular migraine,” she said. “Let me sit down a second.”
“What’s an ocular migraine?” he asked.
“It’s… it’s a migraine that doesn’t hurt, most of the time, but it… it’s like all this light, and all these sparkles, man.”
Niki helped her drop herself onto a concrete parking space header, where Leda sat with her knees almost up against her boobs. The header wasn’t any more than ten inches high. She felt like a kindergartner.
Niki finished the rest. “Some people think that Joan of Arc had them. Like, when she thought she was looking at God, she was looking at a neural irregularity that created a light show behind her eyes. It’s no big deal, usually.”
“Do you often get those, when you have flashes of the psychic variety?”
“Sometimes,” Leda told him. “But it’s just as likely to be unrelated. I’m fine, it’s really fine. It’s not like I drove here. I don’t need to see that well, not right this second.”
“Well, thank God for that, right? But did you see anything?”
“Nope, just a light show.” She squinted and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hands, never mind the mascara smudge. “I’m really sorry about that. I wish I had something more useful to tell you, but that’s all I’ve got: a real bright light behind my eyes, and ooh… it’s starting to sparkle.”
When everyone was confident that Leda was not going to fall over or pass out, they all piled back into Grady Merritt’s car and headed back south, into the city.
15.
Leda Foley hadn’t called shotgun this time, but by playing up her vision difficulties, she’d slipped into the preferred position without Niki even noticing—or at least, without Niki saying anything until they were back on the interstate.
“I let you have the front seat, you know,” she informed Leda. “Just because I felt sorry for you and your garbage gimp-vision headaches.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel bad? Because I’ll take your pity shotgun and smile about it all afternoon.”
Grady smirked. “You seem to be feeling better.”
She rubbed at her left eye and closed them both, trying to ignore the last rings of light that spun around her vision. “Indeed I am. And that Keyes guy, he’s pretty weird, right?”
He asked, “Is that your psychic sense talking, or your sense of drama?”
She shrugged. “I don’t even know, anymore. He’s weird, and I got a flash of light, and that’s it.”
“Plenty of people are weird as hell, but they never murder anybody. Besides, he wasn’t that weird. At worst, he was kind of… I don’t know. Pathetic. Leave the guy alone for now and save your psychic senses for the widow. We’re talking to her on Thursday.”
“We are?” Niki chirped.
“We… okay, fine. We all are, sure. She didn’t care when I told her I’d have a consultant with me, so what’s yet another consultant, right?”
Niki sat back in the seat and looked very smug. Leda could see it from the rearview mirror.
“Goddamn right,” Niki said.
“But you have to swear to me, on your own graves, that you’ll be quiet. That was way too much interrupting back there—way too much audience participation. That’s not what we need—not what we want—and there’s a chance you could screw up the case. Keep your thoughts to yourselves, please? Can you do that for me?”
“Yes, sir,” they both said.
“Because if you don’t, then we can’t keep doing this. If you guys botch a case, we’re all finished here, got it?”
Synchronized again, they said, “Got it.”
* * *
After Grady dropped them off at the travel agency office, Leda and Niki went inside for the rest of the afternoon. Niki didn’t have to be at work, and Leda was in a productive mood.
“Why waste it, right?” Leda dropped herself into the office chair, only indulged a single round of spinning with her feet up off the floor, and then checked her email. As soon as it loaded, she started to squeal.
“Oh my God, are you dying?”
“No, I’m succeeding!” She swiveled the monitor around. “Look, two new queries about travel arrangements! Just like that!”
“All it took was money and advertising.”
“That’s all anything takes, as far as I can tell.” Leda reclaimed the monitor and whipped up a couple of crisp, professional emails in response, with rates and details as requested.
Niki reclined, bringing her booted foot up to the love seat’s arm and letting it rest there. “Before long, you’re going to need a bigger office.”
“Your lips to God’s ears.”