Page 41 of Speak of the Devil
But at least he’d done one good thing today by removing the skeletons of those dead women and sending them to a placewhere someone could properly handle them. No doubt there would be a million questions and some finger-pointing, because a batch of remains from people who’d been dead for decades generally didn’t show up out of nowhere, but he had to believe they’d still be taken care of and hopefully identified.
Just as he was turning onto his street, rain began to fall, spattering his freshly washed Range Rover, but he told himself it wasn’t that big a deal. He’d take it to the car wash tomorrow or whenever it was obvious that they wouldn’t get any more rain for a while.
All the same, he couldn’t help feeling a little melancholy as he picked up his phone and ordered some DoorDash for lunch — a sub sandwich from a deli that wasn’t too far away, along with a tub of potato salad. What he really would have liked was to take Delia out instead, but the expression she’d worn while they were wrapping things up at the house on Pueblo Street told him it would be a long time — if ever — before she was okay with sharing a meal with him again.
Damn it.
Despite that reaction, he was still glad he’d told her the truth. While she’d been shocked, she hadn’t looked at him as if he was some kind of horrible mutant and had even talked about totally normal things afterward, like his plans for the kitchen and some snippets about their high school life.
He would have loved to see her with hair dyed an even brighter red than its normal copper hue, dressed all in black with Doc Martens to finish off the look.
Man, his mother would have freaked out if he’d ever brought a girl like that home.
Smiling in spite of himself, he sat down in the living room and watched raindrops hit the water in the swimming pool, sending up little splashes as they fell. It was a nice pool, surrounded by a carefully landscaped backyard, but he couldn’tstop himself from thinking about the yard at the formerly haunted house on Pueblo Street, which was much bigger and gave the impression of being even larger than it actually was because of the way it backed up to the golf course and all that open green space.
The house had so much potential…potential he was fairly certain would now be realized, since it didn’t seem as if Delia was going to back away from helping him with the renovations despite what she’d learned about him earlier today.
That had to count for something, didn’t it?
And he knew it had been a novel experience to stand there and talk to a woman who’d learned the worst about him but was still willing to be matter-of-fact about the whole thing.
Although she hadn’t stopped herself from asking whether he was a murderer, too, just like the man who’d once owned that house.
He’d answered honestly because he had nothing to hide on that front. He didn’t think his father could have responded the same way and still been telling the truth, but their lives had been very different. By the time Caleb’s generation had come along, it was much more about maintaining the illusion that they had nothing to hide and continuing to build their wealth and position in society, rather than merely biding their time in the hope that Belial might call on them to come to his aid.
Which he had…and the results hadn’t been very pretty.
But he, Caleb, had escaped, and that was the important thing.
The doorbell rang, so he went to get his lunch from the DoorDash driver and then tip a little extra because the weather was so shitty. Now the rain was coming down almost in sheets, and he found himself wishing he’d ordered something warm instead of a cold sub and some potato salad.
Well, it couldn’t be helped now.
He returned to the living room and switched on the TV and made himself eat, all the while wondering if Delia really had a client at one-thirty or whether she’d made up the story so she could get away from him.
No, she didn’t seem like the type of person to lie about that kind of thing.
At least, he hoped she wasn’t.
And although he’d had the passing thought that he might hit the casinos later today, he knew he didn’t much feel like going out. Drivers around here went absolutely nuts when it rained, probably because it happened so rarely.
No, he’d sit tight, maybe watch some home reno shows for inspiration. He already had a few ideas as to what he wanted to do with the Pueblo Street house — Delia’s obvious disapproval of his all-black kitchen notwithstanding — and he couldn’t think of a better use of his time than sitting here with his feet up and letting the afternoon go by.
And the evening, and….
And as long as it takes,he told himself. Right now, he knew he was kind of in limbo, just waiting for the clear title on the house before he could finalize the transaction. Even once that was done, he and Delia would have to focus on finding a general contractor to oversee the renovations, and that would probably take a while, too. Although he certainly hadn’t moved here with the idea of building a house-flipping empire, he thought that might not be a bad way to end up. If nothing else, it would keep him occupied for a while.
He went into the kitchen to get a beer and then, because he thought that was a whole lot of cold on a gloomy afternoon, switched on the fireplace before he sat down again. As he swallowed some beer, he pondered what Delia had told him about her experiences in the parking structure at the Bellagio.
Somehow, she’d sensed that he’d fought a demon there, which meant her strange abilities were attuned to a whole lot more than just ghosts and spirits. Good thing she was on his side — albeit marginally — or that could have caused some trouble.
The last thing he wanted was for anyone to know that a part-demon had been manipulating his winnings at the various casinos in order to plump up his wallet.
But she hadn’t seemed too worried about that part of it. Maybe she figured that because everything was rigged by the casinos anyway, it wasn’t too big a deal for him to indulge in his own form of cheating.
He appreciated that kind of morally gray thinking in a woman.
Delia Dunne wasn’t morally gray, though. Or at least, while she seemed willing to keep his secrets, he doubted she would ever participate in any openly illegal dealings.
