Artifacts Read online

Aldric hunched into himself, and Darrell wanted nothing more right then than to make him uncurl. To bloom. He pulled himself together and addressed the doctor. “Can Mr. Beamer leave? I’d like to offer him a ride home.” To make up for my behavior earlier, he didn’t add, because he wasn’t sure that was the entire reason.

  The doctor straightened with a grunt from where he’d been bending down to Aldric and shining a pen light in his eyes. “He can, yes. He has mild concussion following his loss of consciousness of less than thirty minutes, but he’s alert and his pain is managed.” He gave one of those fleeting medical smiles that doctors were too busy to let settle, then finished scribbling on Aldric’s chart. “But he shouldn’t stay alone, of course.”

  “I’ll stay with him.” Darrell jutted out his chin at Aldric’s boss and co-worker, his watchdogs, when protests sprang to their lips.

  Aldric pushed off his hospital sheet, then swung his feet to the floor. “That would be fine.” He swayed a little, surprise on his face that Darrell thought was maybe due to what he’d just said, as though he hadn’t known he was going to say that, or why he had. He stood straight and added, “Thank you.”

  Darrell smiled. That was good enough for him.

  * * * *

  He wished he had more clothes for Aldric to wear. His were dirty and his shirt had blood down the back of the collar. Still, Aldric had accepted his jacket to wear over it. Darrell snuck looks at him where he was sitting next to Darrell in the passenger seat of Darrell’s pickup, and more than once his gaze snagged with Aldric’s, because Aldric was doing the same to him.

  “So—”

  “Don’t ask me anything about what happened. I can’t remember more than I said. I didn’t see anything before or when I was out. Well, I wouldn’t.” Aldric’s brow creased.

  “I wasn’t. I was going to say I’m rarely in this area. It’s one of the calmer ones.” Darrell tilted his head at the streets they were driving along. Did Aldric usually babble on like that? It was— Again, soft adjectives like sweet and endearing surprised him. Aldric was looking better, too. While still tight with tension, he had more color, and the pain meds must have been kicking in.

  “It’s an old neighborhood. And an old apartment. Just along here.” Aldric’s voice had dropped to a mutter as they approached a small square building set back a little from the bigger house to one side of it.

  Darrell cleared his throat. “It’s—”

  “Decrepit. Oh, a charming garage conversion into a bijou vintage town home, I’m supposed to say. Maybe it even was, back in the day.”

  “Would you stop interrupting me and saying what you think I’m thinking?” It wasn’t the meds that were loosening Aldric’s tongue, Darrell would have bet. He pulled up near the building then walked behind Aldric, not helping him but near enough to, while he headed up the steps to the unit. Darrell’s eyes were drawn to Aldric’s bubble butt. It was as cute as his rambling. The guy seemed timid, yet Darrell remembered how he’d challenged him, back in the alley. And look at me, checking out a guy with a head injury, who’s just out of hospital. Je-sus.

  Aldric hesitated, his key in hand, and Darrell eased forward. “Here. Let me.” The key stuck and needed forcing, as did the door, but he got it open and stood back for Aldric to enter.

  “This is the living area,” Aldric announced, unnecessarily, in the tiny hall space just inside. He spoke to the floor. “And there’s the kitchenette and dinette. Lots of ettes. Bathroom. Bedroom, with patioette. If that’s a word. I grew up in this area and when my parents sold up and moved—they couldn’t wait any longer and it wasn’t fair to make them—this came up.”

  He half-twisted and gestured on the word this and because Darrell was so close, Aldric’s hand landed on his chest. Aldric looked startled, more so when Darrell trapped it with his. Aldric looked from their hands to Darrell’s face. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, but Darrell got in first, fascinated by this man.

  “What’s green?”

  “Your eyes.” Aldric tried to clear his throat and gave up. “I wondered. I didn’t see the color clearly.”

  Darrell grinned, enjoying this. “See ’em now?”

  Aldric nodded.

  “You keep telling me what I’m thinking—and getting it wrong—so what are they saying?” he asked.

  Aldric dipped his head, but Darrell’s hand under his chin, where his fingers stroked the soft skin they found, stopped him. Instead Aldric raised his eyes to Darrell’s face.

  “Can’t you guess? That I want you?” Darrell asked.

  Darrell’s words thrilled Aldric. They shot through him like a bolt of lightning, sizzling a path. Answers rumbled together in his brain like gumballs fighting to get down a chute, but what came out was, “I want you too.” Before his brain could catch up with his mouth, could take back those words, he’d moved, and so had Darrell—to grab his hips and kiss him.

  His brain tried to second-guess, but Aldric told it to shut the hell up and opened his mouth under the pressure of Darrell’s lips against his, then gasped as Darrell swept his tongue in—tasting, and learning, was the only description Aldric could supply, when his brain was stuck on the word swept. Swept in and swept me away. Wanting to escape his own thoughts, he pressed close. Tight. And didn’t flinch when Darrell’s hand moved from his side to his lower back, and his ass. It squeezed and caressed, and as if there were a direct connection, Aldric’s cock thickened in his pants, the swiftness of his reaction shocking him.

  Darrell moved so there was no gap between them, only contact, then hummed low in his chest. It vibrated along every nerve ending in Aldric’s body and gathered in his balls. As if Darrell knew, he shifted to put a little distance between them, enough to get his hand to Aldric’s crotch and duplicate the stroking he was doing to Aldric’s ass on his cock. Aldric’s dick grew more erect still, as if wanting to push into Darrell’s fingers.

  No. Too much, too soon, after too long. After never. Aldric’s brain was trying, but all his blood was pooling lower, while Darrell caressed him. Aldric tore his mouth from Darrell’s and twisted his body away too, but too late. His arousal thundered, ripped from him, and he came in his pants. A dismayed, disbelieving sound forced itself from his lungs and he hunched over.

  “Hey.”

  He wasn’t going to look up. Ever.

  “It’s okay. Been a while?”

  He wasn’t speaking again, either. Ever.

  “We can move this to the bedroom and—”

  “I don’t— I mean I haven’t. Not like this.” Okay, so he was speaking, even if it made no sense. He risked a tiny peek up. So I’m looking again too. “Hook-ups. Just meet and well, get down to it. I don’t know how to.” He forced himself to straighten up and dragged his gaze along Darrell’s body to his chest. “Let me go clean up. Then I’ll make some tea, and we can talk. You’re staying anyway, right? We can get to know each other a bit.” He finally managed to look Darrell in the eye.

  Darrell was frozen, like a deer in the headlights. He heaved in a ragged breath, then backed away, giving tiny shakes of his head. He clapped a hand to his chest as light played over it. Actual headlights, followed by the sharp pah-pah-pah blast of the horn Selena always gave.

  “Huh? That’s my cousin.” Aldric didn’t understand why she’d be here at the best of times, let alone this time of night. “Oh, I had her down as next-of-kin. The hospital must have called her!”

  Darrell had reached the door by now and opened it behind him. “So she’ll stay with you? Aldric…I-I don’t do talk and getting-to-know. Sorry.”

  And he was gone, leaving Aldric alone, confused and with his pants full of cooling cum.

  Chapter Seven

  Sean shot Darrell a look. “You wanna drive? Is that the reason for all the clenching your fists and sighing?”

  “What? Oh, no.” Darrell stretched out his fingers and made an effort to focus on the here and now.

  “I know people think I got a lead foot.” Sean turned the patrol c
ar onto one of The Dominion’s smaller avenues. “My ma gets really Catholic in the car with me, clutching her crucifix and crossing herself.”

  “You drive fine. Just thinking. Nice houses.”

  They should be. The neighborhood was the most affluent in the San Antonio area. It was hard to see most of the houses, with them being set far back from the road and their grounds screened by mature trees.

  Mature. Funny, he’d just been brooding again on what an immature jerk he’d been to Aldric. It had been three days ago now and still Darrel’s face heated when he thought about how he’d left the guy. How he’d behaved toward the guy, and not just in walking out on him like that.

  He’d been snappy with him when they’d met. What had Aldric’s boss called him, a Neanderthal? About right. Then taking advantage of a victim of an assault. Aldric had been whacked out on pain pills, for fuck’s sake, and yet Darrell had moved in on him.

  He moved on me back, a small voice in his head argued. It replayed images of Aldric’s lips parting and his mouth opening for Darrell’s tongue. Of his dick pushing into Darrell’s hand. His dick that had shot its load within minutes because Aldric wasn’t used to—

  The thought that it could have been the guy’s first time had Darrell turning to stone, his lungs trying to quit working on him.

  He forced himself to breathe, then to talk. “So, you looking for something like this, when you and Daniela move in together?” He nodded at the grounds Sean was turning the police vehicle into.

  “She would if she could, yeah. This looks like a resort, man!”

  It did. Like some place for a beyond-his-paygrade all-inclusive vacation. Sean slowed for the crime scene techs in their van behind them to catch up, then continued past the massive house and round to the casita, a smaller-scale version near the pool. “We couldn’t even afford this,” Sean commented.

  A woman was waiting outside the vandalized casita, and Sean went to greet her then drew her away to let forensics get to work. Darrell thought he’d be better employed looking over the scene before he joined his partner and the vic. The damage was minimal. A few windows all in a line had been smashed, as though someone had run past them and hit one after the other, but more interesting was the spray-painted graffiti.

  “D’you mind?” The plastic-suited guy elbowed him roughly out of the way to take pictures.

  “What’s put a bug up your ass?” Darrell asked, standing his ground.

  “Let’s just say I really don’t like being pulled off a more serious, more urgent case for this, just so Miller can say his most experienced crime scene team is on it. Any science technician with field training could work this SOC.” The guy snapped pictures and spared Darrell a glance. “You don’t look like the station’s most senior patrol officer, though.”

  “The most charming.” Darrell indicated Sean, who was either consoling or calming down the vic. At least that raised a smile from the technician. Darrell took a few pictures himself on his phone then headed over to Sean and the owner of the house, trying to interpret Sean’s expression.

  “My partner, Officer Darrell Williams.” Sean introduced him to the mid-thirties, auburn-haired woman clutching a linen handkerchief. “Mrs. Randa Buckman, Buck Buckman’s widow.”

  “I’m very sorry for your loss.” Darrell tried to recall exactly when her husband had died. Not quite a week ago, he thought, recalling the news stories about the real estate billionaire. “And I’m sorry this has happened to you. But we’ll do our best to catch whoever’s responsible, of course.”

  “Mrs. Buckman thinks she knows who did it.” Sean’s voice sounded like he was swallowing something.

  “Oh?” Darrell flipped open his notebook. Someone or something connected to her late husband, he’d bet. A business rival? Jim ‘Buck’ Buckman had been one of the richest men in the county, making a fortune in real estate. Not just industrial parks for science and IT companies—his company had been one of the groups that had developed the Cultural Corridor, part of the Riverwalk.

  Darrell did the math on this woman’s age compared to Buck’s and came up with second or third. As in wife. Meaning predecessors. Randa, left all this by Buck’s death, could have her own rivals too. “Who do you think’s responsible, ma’am?”

  “My husband!” Randa buried her face in the handkerchief she’d been twisting in her hands. Darrell looked at Sean, and Sean looked back. “My late husband, I mean. Buck. Did you read the message?”

  “It said ‘I want my puzzles’, right?” It had puzzled him, and Sean shrugged in incomprehension too.

  “Exactly.” Randa nodded at Darrell. “He wants to be reunited with his puzzles.”

  “His…?”

  “That’s his writing, on the wall there!” Randa’s voice rose, but she fanned her face and got herself calm. “It’s my fault. I couldn’t bear to walk into his study and see all that stuff he collected. Oh, not the artwork and priceless stuff for his collections. That’s displayed throughout the house. I mean the little curios and games he had on the tables in his room. He spent so much time tracking bits and pieces down and buying them, and so much time with them when he’d gotten them. I had to get rid of it, just sell it all as a job lot. Seeing it without him, I mean.”

  “Which puzzles in particular?” Darrell was making a few notes.

  “Boxes. Those little Oriental ones you can’t open.” Randa held her hands a few inches apart in demonstration. “He loved playing with them, trying to get them to give up their secrets, as he called it. He got off on the challenge. Soon as he solved one, he moved to the next. They took up half his desk. He liked all the curiosities he got, but he adored those little wooden Japanese boxes. Any visitors we had, he’d see if they could work out the secret of his latest one, or his favorite one. And I sold them!”

  It was awkward, watching her sob, head bent and the handkerchief covering her face. An assistant came up with a glass of water and put it into her hand. Randa swallowed some, then handed it back and raised her head. “I joked that he wanted to be buried with them, that he loved those stupid mosaic wood boxes, and he agreed. I didn’t know he meant it.”

  “Well, how could you have?” Sean kept his voice neutral. Darrell could hear already how he’d be recounting this later, laughing it up about how they didn’t need crime scene techs from the lab to catch a criminal, but a priest from the church to lay a ghost to rest.

  “What have I done?” Randa turned from one to another. “What if he can’t cross over to be at peace, with his spirit disturbed, and that’s why he’s wandering here, doing this? What’s going to happen next?” She scrunched the handkerchief and pressed it to her mouth, her hand shaking.

  “Let’s not borrow trouble, ma’am. I have a few questions, if that’s okay?” When Randa nodded, Darrell took her through the when and how of the vandalism.

  “No, the security cameras don’t cover that entrance to the casita,” she told him in answer to a question. “I’ll have some installed there now, though.”

  And no one in the main house had heard anything. Interviewing the two members of staff who lived in had confirmed that.

  “We taking a look around the house?” Darrell asked Sean, who shook his head.

  “Negative.”

  Decided higher up. Darrell got it. And yeah, with forensics not finding obvious footprints or traces of an intruder anywhere on the grounds, there seemed little point. Randa thought so too. There’d been no B&E, no robbery. No sign at all that anyone had been there…except for Buck, whose handwriting Randa was sure the graffiti was in, telling them this three times in total.

  “Why don’t they have security cameras on this entrance or on this section of the pool house?” he wondered.

  Sean hid a laugh. Amusement at crime scenes was a no-no. “It’s real easy to see you don’t have a chica. If you did, you’d catch at least some of these Rich Housewives of Where The Fuck Ever programs.”

  “And?”

  “And if you did, you’d know the pool ho
use is where the rich go for their quick fucks with their side pieces when their other half’s out.”

  “But which other half?” A marriage was two people. Either Buck or Randa could have made use of the casita. “But would that have anything to do with the vandalism?”

  “What you thinking? One of the help’s trying to mess with her?” Sean asked.

  “Could be.” The vandalism, although costly, felt half-assed to Darrell. “But whatever, she seems keen on getting those boxes, the puzzles, back. I’m wondering… She said they were Japanese, right?” He reread his notes. “What if they, or one or more, were valuable? Like, jade or ivory or something? Some priceless antique she sold cheap and now wants back?”

  It clicked then. Hit him, rather, making him want to stagger, like Aldric had done. “Fuck, Sean, she sold them to Intrinsic Value! That antique store where the employee got hit from behind when he was leaving with a box of stuff from—”

  “The estate sale!” Sean was right there with him. “But the guy, and the boss, said the box was full of worthless stuff, cheap crap that they wouldn’t sell in the store, right?”

  “They said, yeah, but…” Darrell let his shrug say neither he nor Sean were experts in appraising antiques. He flipped through his notebook. “Elliot Douglas gave Aldric Beamer some valueless items.”

  He liked saying Aldric’s full name and was glad to have an excuse to think about Aldric. His tangle of dark hair, his dark brown eyes peeping shyly at the world from behind his round glasses, then flashing with determination. He was contradictory. Intriguing. Darrell had been fascinated from that first glimpse.

  That interest had propelled him to the hospital, where he’d acted on impulse in offering Darrell a ride home. And offered to stay with him, hoping for a different kind of ride. The little voice, half devil on his shoulder, half conscience, was back. Not like he wasn’t willing. The idea of being the first to give the timid yet hot Aldric his first ass-fuck had Darrell weak at the knees. He’d make it good. Prep Aldric well first. And after… Images of him tending to the now-initiated Aldric, taking care of him, caressing him, flickered in his mind’s eye. Darrell being the big spoon to him all night. The fuck? He wasn’t about that kind of thing. At all.