Disclaimer: I don't own Indigo Prophecy. :)
Chapter Two
TURNS OUT CANDY'S name wasn't Candy after all.
She was Mary Louise Atherton, thirty-seven, divorced twice with an eight-year-old named Amy. She lived with her mother out in Cicero. The newsanchor said she worked at the Super Target on Halsted.
The picture they showed on the television had been taken at least ten years earlier; it only faintly resembled the woman who was in David's apartment on Thursday night. Her lips hadn't been Botox-ed, her hair was a short, mousy brown, the crow's feet at the corners of her eyes weren't apparent yet.
Her smile was genuine, innocent.
Ms. Atherton was found face up in a pool of her own blood in the women's bathroom of the Melrose Diner at 1:45 AM by a group of clubgoers. She had been stabbed multiple times in the chest around the area of the heart, although an autopsy had yet to declare an official cause of death. Officers on the scene estimate half an hour had passed from the time of her murder to the discovery of her body. No murder weapon was found, no suspects in custody. Witnesses are being interviewed, and a composite sketch should be available within the next few days.
Atherton's mother, a Mrs. Lynn Woods, described Mary Louise as a "sweet, caring, loving daughter, who was never involved with any kind of gangs or drugs."
David wondered how well Mrs. Woods really knew her daughter.
"Sir?"
"Huh?" A cheerful young barista broke David out of his reverie. "Oh, sorry, I'll have a tall vanilla latte to go, please."
"No problem. One tall vanilla latte to go." Her smile was infectious. As David turned away, he could feel her smile still glued to his back. With his gray eyes and blond hair, he knew from childhood that his face made heads turn, but he pointedly ignored the stares. He wanted people to remember what he did, not what he looked like.
Composite sketches will be available within the next few days.
David wondered if he'd be staring at his own face from the front page of the newspaper by the end of the week.
Where had he been last night? Why couldn't he remember? What if he had murdered that poor woman? But try as he might, David couldn't remember anything out of the ordinary happening. He distinctly remembered going to bed at around 9:30, after watching some old Hitchcock movie... the one with the guy in the wheelchair watching everybody from his window. He remembered shutting the window in his bedroom. He couldn't remember ever being at the Melrose Diner on Broadway, whether it was last night or any other night.
The cheerful barista handed him his coffee and wished him a good day. David hated to venture back out into the cold, but he couldn't sit still. He found himself compulsively looking around the room, expecting to see someone who watched him back. He huddled his shoulders together and stepped outside.
And into a polar bear.
David nearly spilled his coffee. "Excuse me!"
In front of him was something that vaguely resembled a human, except it was covered from head to toe in frothy white. Fur-lined boots, white jeans, shiny, silvery coat. The form pulled back its feathered hood to reveal a young woman with caramel eyes and an exuberant smile.
"Oops! Sorry about that! Didn't mean to bump into you!"
David smiled for the first time that day. "No, it's okay. I didn't spill anything."
"Awww... too bad."
"...Excuse me?"
The woman smiled. "That coffee smells so good I would've licked it off the floor."
David looked around, wondering if anybody else heard that. "Uh, okay..."
"It's not like I can't afford any coffee of my own, really. I'm not poor or anything. It's just that I have this thing with caffeine, my doctor says I should lay off of it as much as possible. It does weird things to my system."
"I can see why," David laughed.
"I can make do with tea, you know, those exotic Japanese ones... they don't have as much caffeine in them, so I don't go bouncing off the walls like I usually do." She shook off the snow from her shoulders and did a full-body shiver. "Either that, or chocolate drinks are good, too. Chocolate would taste really good on a day like today, you think?"
"I guess so." David wondered why this hyperactive woman was still speaking to him. Not that he minded so much.
"Um... so are you going to stand in the doorway all day, or what?" The woman smirked.
"Oh! I didn't mean to." David twisted around so he could hold the door open. "I couldn't help but notice..."
"That's okay. I kind of have that effect on people," she said as she slid into the warm coffee shop. "My therapist tells me that sometimes after I've been talking a while, she doesn't know whether she's coming or going."
"Tell your therapist she's a patient woman."
"Oh, she is. My psychic counselor tells me she's gonna stick with me for a really long time, or at least until they finally decide if Pluto's is going to be a planet or not."
"They're deciding on whether Pluto is a planet? I thought that was decided already."
"Nope, my masseuse says that if Pluto is a planet, then some asteroids should be planets, too. I wonder what they'll do with that saying... 'My very earnest mother just served us nine pizzas.'"
"My very... what?"
"You've never heard that saying? My tutor taught it to me, when I was nine. It helps you remember the names of the planets: Mars, Venus, Earth, Mercury, Jupiter..."
"Wait, wait... Mercury is the first planet, then Mars comes later..."
The woman looked confused. "Are you sure?" She started to count on her fingers.
"Pretty sure, yeah."
"Huh, you must be right. I'm gonna have to correct my florist the next time I see him."
David felt dizzy.
"I'm Janet, in case you were wondering." Janet stuck out her hand, complete with fuzzy white glove.
"David... Tamlin." They shook hands.
"Nice to meet you, David. Hope to see you again. Now, if it's okay with you, I'm gonna get me a nice Frappucino." Janet turned away and walked to the register.
"A Frappucino... on a day like today?" But David saw she was already talking up a storm with the barista. The barista suddenly looked like a deer caught in headlights. He shook his head – convinced he was just run over by a truck wearing knit woolen mittens – and left.
