Abracadaver (Esther Diamond Novel) Page 3

  I looked at Ted and his mother again. They were now being examined by paramedics—and still arguing. Lily looked sullen and tragic—and still beautiful. Ted looked furious—which wasn’t surprising, though it was unusual. He was normally a very affable guy, though feckless, incompetent, and unreliable.

  “I feel sorry for Ted, though,” I said. “He’s done nothing wrong, and he didn’t know his mother and sister were doing wrong. Yet he’s lost everything. Even the store. I know he didn’t care about it, but it was also his home—and it must have been worth some money.”

  “It’s bound to be insured,” said Lucky. “So unless someone can prove this fire was caused by mystical arson—”

  “Unlikely,” Max said. “They will look for mundane causes and will never find any.”

  “Then there’s probably gonna be a nice payout,” Lucky said to me. “If he’s got any brains at all, the kid will talk his mom into splitting it with him.”

  “Well, after what she did, he’s certainly got the guilt leverage for that.” And I thought that walking away from his toxic family and their past with a wad of money in his pocket, free to live on his own terms and forced to become self-reliant, might be a very positive outcome for Ted Yee.

  At any rate, it was certainly a positive outcome for anyone else involved in this whole fiasco whom his mother and sister would have willfully cursed with misfortune or death in order to sabotage Ted’s ambitions.

  A shiver passed through me as I again recalled finding that deadly cookie in Lopez’s police car. He could have died at any moment. The second that fragile cookie began to crumble, he’d have been doomed . . .

  I fervently hoped that Susan Yee would spend decades behind bars.

  And I realized something as I watched her home burn in the wake of her mystical booby trap. “Lily and Ted don’t know about Susan’s arrest.”

  “The cops’ll catch up to events soon and tell ’em,” said Lucky.

  “Yes, I guess you’re right.” I suspected they’d both be relieved by the news, though probably for different reasons. And since I wasn’t eager to speak to the Yee family ever again, I was content to leave it up to the NYPD to tell them what had happened.

  The NYPD . . .

  I glanced at Nelli and recalled that there were pressing matters I needed to discuss with Max. But looking at him now, I realized this wasn’t a good moment for that. He had just survived a deadly inferno after performing mystical tasks that were probably exhausting.

  I said to Lucky, “We should take Max home. He needs a shower, a hot meal, and some rest.”

  “Oh, that sounds wonderful,” Max said on a sigh.

  I looked around at the scene, wondering if he’d get in trouble for leaving it without making a statement to the authorities. But no one was paying attention to us—and I thought that Lily and Ted were unlikely to mention Max to anyone as a witness, let alone explain his involvement. It was in their best interests to stick with a simple and mundane story about today’s events; the building suddenly caught fire, they didn’t know how or why, and it had spread fast.

  I took Max’s arm and we turned away from the blazing remains of Yee & Sons Trading Company. Followed by Lucky and Nelli, we headed back toward Canal Street. We could probably hail a cab there, despite how crowded it was around here today . . . but could we find a taxi that would let Nelli come with us? She was an inconveniently large animal.

  I remembered that Max had recently found a pet transport service that he used when going places with Nelli that weren’t within walking distance of his home in Greenwich Village. I was about to ask him for the phone number, or at least the name, when my cell phone rang, startling me.

  As a cruelly cold wind swept down the street, I pulled off a glove and reached into my pocket, clumsily answering the phone without bothering to see who the caller was.

  “Esther Diamond,” I said wearily, realizing how ready I was to get out of the cold. It had been a long, busy, and very fraught day—and now darkness was descending.

  “Hi, it’s me.” In response to my blank silence, the caller added, “John.”

  “Oh! John.” I smiled for a moment, then asked with concern, “How are you feeling?”

  “Pretty freaked out.”

  “Well, yeah,” I said sympathetically. “I can only imagine. It must be freaky to see someone you’ve known your whole life suddenly point a gun at you with murder in her eyes.”

  “It’s John?” Lucky asked me. “How is he?”

  “Freaked out,” I said, putting my hand over the phone for a moment. “See if you can find a cab that’ll take us.”

  Lucky grunted skeptically but started looking around.

  “Oh . . . yeah, I guess I’m still pretty freaked out about Susan,” John said, sounding distracted. “I don’t even know why she was trying to kill me. Some cop was just here asking—”

  “Cop?” I repeated alertly. “What cop?”

  “—and, well, I don’t think he believed me when I said I have no idea why. Except that she seemed pretty crazy all of a sudden.”

  “Was it Lopez?” I asked. “The detective I was talking to at the scene?”

  Hearing that name, Lucky grumbled, “What’s Wonder Boy up to now?”

  He was a little irritated with Lopez, who’d broken open a big case against the Gambello crime family a few weeks ago and was keeping busy lately by arresting a bunch of Lucky’s associates.

  “I mean, really crazy,” said John. “Susan was like a rabid animal or something today . . .” I could hear him draw in a sharp breath as a new thought occurred to him. “I wonder if Ted’s all right? I mean . . . do we know if Susan targeted anyone else?”

  That was a complicated subject, so I settled for saying that Ted was unhurt, and Susan hadn’t shot at anyone else. I started to tell John about the fire that was consuming the store, but before I uttered more than a syllable, he interrupted me to say that he hadn’t called to talk about Susan or Ted.

  “No?” I said absently, pointing out an approaching cab to Lucky while deciding how to phrase the news about the fire.

  “Oh,” John said. “No, I’m sorry, I didn’t call about that, either, Esther. Not right now.”

  Lucky tried to wave down the cab, but it roared right past us. Perhaps the driver had noticed our soot-covered friend and our pony-sized dog.

  “What’s not right now?” I asked.

  “Our date.”

  I blinked. “Huh?”

  “I mean, I am going to ask you out. Obviously. Like we talked about today.”

  We did? I blinked again. I had no memory of talking about it.

  He continued, “Just not right now . . . Well, unless you want it to be right now?”

  “Um . . .” I frowned, caught off guard.

  John was asking me out on a date? And he thought we had talked about this?

  I tried to remember what he’d said to me in the chaos after Susan was arrested. Something about thanking me, calling me, dinner . . .

  Oh.

  I realized, not for the first time, that I can be such an idiot sometimes.

  I liked John. A lot, in fact. But I hadn’t realized until just now, when John baldly used the word “date,” that he had been showing interest in me—that kind of interest.

  John was subtle and courteous about it (which was the kind of man he was), and that was one of the reasons I’d been oblivious until this moment.

  But the main reason I hadn’t noticed John flirting with me—which I now realized he had been doing lately—was because I was obsessed with Lopez. Or at least very preoccupied with him. And we were dating again. Or trying to date, anyhow . . . unless, after last night’s smash-and-grab, we were already in another off-again phase? Either way, I was involved with him. Well, kind of involved. We had a relationship, anyhow, though we weren’t in a relationship. Not yet
, really. Or maybe we were, but we didn’t—

  Okay, stop.

  I let my breath out in a rush and gave myself a mental kick. This was not the time to try to find the right word for whatever was between me and Lopez. So far, we had never found the right word for it, and it certainly wasn’t going to happen now, standing in ankle-deep slush on a noisy street corner in Chinatown while Max and Lucky both looked at me with concern, no doubt wondering what John was saying that was making me go all tense and fidgety.

  On my phone, John said, “I mean, I want to ask you out later, when my head is clear, instead of right now when I’m so freaked out.”

  Oh, no, I thought uncomfortably. John wanted to go out with me. What was I going to do? What should I say to him?

  I’d had no problem recently turning down Danny Teng (multiple times), because he was a sleazy thug who made my skin crawl. But I hated the thought of rejecting John, who I really liked.

  I was unprepared. How had I not seen this coming?

  Come on, don’t beat yourself up. There’s been a lot of Evil and fear and deadly cookies ever since you met John. And you’ve been working long hours, too.

  Plus, things had been so volatile with Lopez lately.

  Oh, when are things not volatile with him?

  “Esther,” John prodded. “Is that okay?”

  I really needed to focus here.

  “Is John okay?” Lucky asked.

  “I don’t know,” I replied.

  “What’s going on?” Lucky demanded.

  “I’m sorry, I know I’m babbling,” John said. “And not making much sense.”

  “No, it’s okay,” I said vaguely. “You’re fine.”

  “Is something wrong?” Lucky asked, worried about his honorary nephew, who’d had a close brush with death today.

  “Would you just look for a cab?” I said.

  “A cab?” John repeated blankly.

  “Not you,” I said. “John, what’s going on? Why did you call?”

  He took a breath. “I really need you to bring your friend Dr. Zadok here.”

  “Where is ‘here’?”

  “Oh! Sorry. I’m at the funeral home.”

  I looked at Max, covered in soot and patently weary, as I asked John, “When do you want to see him?”

  “Right now.” When I didn’t answer immediately, John said, “It’s important, Esther.”

  “All right. We’re still in Chinatown,” I said a little reluctantly. “We can be there in a few minutes. But what’s going on?”

  “Well, um . . . This is going to sound weird.”

  “Uh-huh.” I gestured at Lucky, trying to tell him we wouldn’t need a ride, after all.

  John cleared his throat. “One of the departed . . . I mean, a few minutes ago, one of our corpses just kind of . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “. . . just kind of got out of its coffin and walked away.”

  3

  Chen’s Funeral Home was in a turn-of-the-century building in what had previously been Little Italy, a neighborhood which had shrunk to just a few short blocks over the decades while Chinatown had by now grown to encompass much of the old Lower East Side. The funeral business operated in an L-shaped structure with two entrances that were on different streets, their façades separated from each other by the other buildings on the two blocks; unless you knew what lay behind the public faces of the two well-established funeral parlors, you’d never guess they were one business.

  One entrance was for Chen’s. The other entrance, around the corner, was for Antonelli’s Funeral Home. The distinctive, old-fashioned exteriors respectively looked Chinese and Italian. Antonelli’s entrance was decorated with thick marble pillars, carved vines and flowers, plump angels, and trumpeting cherubim. Chen’s was austere black and gold, with Chinese characters over the door. Lucky’s uncle and John’s grandfather had run one business with two separate clienteles for some forty years, processing the bodies for both funeral parlors in the middle, at the junction of the L-shaped building.

  Decades after the founding of that successful partnership, the Chens ran both halves of the business now, and there were many Chinese funerals in Antonelli’s, as well as in Chen’s. The Chen family continued to use the European name and décor of the Antonelli section, though, since they also served a non-Chinese clientele. Lucky, who had inherited his share of the company from his uncle, was a silent partner who kept his name and his nose out of the Chens’ reputable business. But given the high mortality rate in Lucky’s own line of work, I assumed he referred plenty of customers to Antonelli’s Funeral Home.

  The Chinese side of the building, through which we entered the funeral home now, was decorated in elegantly somber shades of gold and red. There were several tapestries hanging on the walls, as well as some banners that displayed graceful Chinese calligraphy. During visitations, several tables here were typically draped in white linen and covered with traditional offerings of food, liquor, and brightly colored paper replicas of things the deceased had enjoyed in life and hoped to continue enjoying in death: cars, money, a boat, a house, and so on.

  I had been here a number of times by now, so the setting was familiar to me. I could see that the Chens were starting to prepare for a wake, which wasn’t surprising. They ran a successful, well-established business, and their facilities were in frequent use.

  Besides, John had already told me there was a dead person in a coffin here today. Or, rather, a dead person who was no longer in his coffin . . .

  “Alberto!” John’s father, Nathan Chen, greeted Lucky with obvious relief. “John said you were all right, but I’ve been worried. He didn’t know where you went after Susan was arrested—and I couldn’t call you, because you left your phone here.”

  “Figures. I rushed out of here pretty fast after Esther warned me about Susan.” Lucky added, “And we’ve been so busy since then, I didn’t even notice it was missing.”

  Looking stunned by the day’s events, Nathan said, “I always had a feeling something would go wrong with the Yee girl. So tense, so judgmental and bad-tempered. But trying to kill John?” He shook his head. “No, I never once imagined that. And I can’t thank all of you enough for risking your lives to protect John today! He never suspected Susan had anything against him, so he’d have been an easy target if not for your bravery.”

  We assured him it was our pleasure, he thanked us several more times, and then we accepted the hot tea he offered us.

  Nelli, who had spent time here with Lucky lately, greeted Nathan affectionately. He withstood this patiently, though he obviously wasn’t a dog person.

  Nathan Chen was not as tall as his sons, John and Sam (Sam was the elder brother, a full-time mortician who would one day take over the business), but he had the same trim build, good posture, and attractive features. He was a widower in his early sixties, with a pleasantly lined face and gray hair, and he had the gentle manners of someone accustomed to dealing sensitively with bereaved families.

  There were many obvious differences between Lucky and Nathan, who was a law-abiding Chinese-American businessman and respected member of the community. But the two men had known each other all their lives, and despite how little they might have in common in terms of education, lifestyle, and career choices, they were bound by friendship and trust.

  “Miss Diamond.” Nathan nodded to me, then he turned to Max. “Dr. Zadok. I am grateful to you both for coming here on such short notice. John says you are knowledgeable in matters such as our . . . our . . . what happened here.”

  “Please call me Max.”

  “And call me Esther,” I added.

  Max started to ask, “What exactly has happ—”

  “Esther! Uncle Lucky!” John entered the elegant reception hall via the door that led to the offices and workrooms—the portion of the building where the Chens prepared bodies
for visitation and burial. That area of the mortuary was contemporary and utilitarian, in contrast to the elegant visitation rooms. “Dr. Zadok, I’m so glad you’re here.”

  “Max,” said the old mage. “I insist.”

  John was a tall, handsome, American-born Chinese man, a year or two younger than my twenty-seven years, with thick, shiny hair, broad shoulders, and an appealing smile. He was also bright, sensible, kind, and had a dry sense of humor. I enjoyed John’s company—and wished I didn’t feel so self-conscious now that I knew he wanted to date me.

  What am I going to do about that?

  The moment to nip this in the bud by signaling that I wasn’t interested had already passed me by. I thought John was someone who would notice such signals, but since I was too dense to notice he was flirting with me, I hadn’t sent them. So he had brought up the subject of asking me out, and my distracted cluelessness had evidently come across as reciprocal interest.

  The fact that I liked John ensured that I felt terrible about that now. And the fact that I found him attractive and probably would have been interested in him if I had never met Lopez made me feel as if I had led him on—which guilt made me feel annoyed with John for being attracted to me in the first place. If he had just had the sense not to notice me, I thought grumpily, then I wouldn’t now be stuck with feeling bad about accidentally letting him think I wanted to go out with him.

  However, rather than gazing at me with fervent longing now, John was clearly stressed and distracted this evening—and no wonder. He’d nearly been murdered today, and he’d apparently also had a disturbingly weird experience here a little while ago.

  Pouring the tea he had offered us, Nathan asked Lucky where he had gone after leaving the crime scene. Lucky caught my eye and then, keeping the story simple, said we’d gone looking for Max, from whom I had gotten separated. Still keeping it simple, Lucky also told John and Nathan about the fire we’d witnessed at Yee & Sons Trading Company. Father and son commented on the dark fate of the Yees, who only days ago had been a respected Chinatown family with a successful business, much like the Chens themselves.