Grave Phantoms
Page 49

It just wasn’t safe. Astrid wasn’t alone. She’d gone out with Jonte. And Jonte, like Greta, took care of the Magnussons like they were his own flesh and blood, but he was sixty-two and had a bum leg. The old Swede also refused to carry a gun. At least he had the sense to telephone Bo and warn him that Astrid had asked him to drive her around town. When Bo found out where they ended up, he was going to give her a piece of his mind.
“Bo?”
He glanced up from the fresh bandage that covered his minted stitches and found Velma and Winter staring at him like he’d lost his damn mind. Maybe he had.
“I was asking you about that disk,” Velma said, pointing to the piece of gold that sat on the handkerchief spread over Winter’s desk. “That looks an awful lot like the symbol on the front of that idol you showed me.”
Winter frowned. “You’ve already shown her, too? And Lowe? Am I the last person to see it?”
He was, because right after Bo had confessed everything to Winter that morning, he’d taken his dinged-up Buick over to the Presidio, found Little Mike on guard duty, and handed him a parcel containing the turquoise idol.
Minus the gold disk with the symbol.
No longer giving a damn about preserving either an archaeological treasure or a magical object, he’d taken an ice pick and a hammer and pried the thing off in about ten minutes. Funnily enough, he’d discovered that the “disk” was actually a gold coin that had been melted down on the front and engraved. The back of the coin was still mostly preserved. It was very old. Spanish. A doubloon, he thought. If he had time, he’d take it to Lowe and Hadley or possibly to the Wicked Wenches for verification.
“This is for Mrs. Cushing,” he’d told Little Mike when he’d handed over the parcel. “I ended up tracking down that man I was looking for last time I was here. He asked me to return this.”
He’d included a friendly note inside the package that said:
You’ll get the gold coin back when you tell me what the symbol means. When you’re ready to talk, send a note along to Pier 26. And if any of you comes within a hundred feet of Miss Magnusson again, I’ll burn your house to the ground.
Straight to the point, Bo felt. And it wasn’t an idle threat. He didn’t care whether these people were magical pirates or murdering occultists, they could be buried like anyone else walking around on two legs. Bo’s patience for bullshit was at an end.
The telephone rang. He waved Winter off and walked around the desk to answer it, re-buttoning his shirt. “Magnusson’s,” he said into the mouthpiece.
“It’s Jonte again,” a Swedish-accented voice said over the crackling line. “I just dropped her off and am waiting outside for her to return. So far, no trouble. I can see the building entrance from here and no one is following.”
From the dings and clangs in the background, it sounded as though he was calling from inside a restaurant. “Where are you?” Bo asked.
“I am inside Golden Lotus. Miss Astrid is across the street in your old apartment building in Chinatown.”
Bo stared at the telephone cord as if it were a snake, and hoped he wasn’t having a heart attack.
Jesus H. Christ.
Astrid was visiting Sylvia Fong.
—
Astrid smiled at the wary eyes that peeked through the cracked apartment door on the fourth floor of Bo’s building. “Hiya,” she said. “Not sure if you remember me, but I met you at Gris-Gris.”
No acknowledgment.
“We took a taxi together,” she clarified. “I was with Bo.”
Never mind that Sylvia had actually arrived with Bo; Astrid went home with him. Sort of. Her life truly was a mess, wasn’t it?
“Bo?” the woman looked very confused. She turned around and spoke to someone over her shoulder in rapid Cantonese. The answer came back in another feminine voice. “Yeung Bo-Sing.”
The door opened. Standing inside the apartment was a beautiful woman dressed in a smart coat and hat. A woman who looked just like Sylvia Fong . . . were it not for the fact that her hair was much longer. Astrid’s brain was having trouble making sense of this.
Footfalls raced toward the door, and seconds later, Sylvia’s bobbed head poked around her shoulder. “Miss Magnusson,” she said with a smile.
Stars, there were two of them. Two!
“This is my twin sister, Amy,” Sylvia provided helpfully. “Amy, this is Astrid Magnusson.”
“O-oh,” Amy said, looking her up and down with greater interest, and then checking behind her—as if she expected Bo himself to be there. Astrid could practically smell the disappointment when the twin found the hallway empty. “Nice to meet you, but I’m late for work. Tell Ah-Sing I said to call. I miss him.”
Astrid’s smile faltered. She would absolutely not be telling him that. But before she could think of a response, Amy was sidling around her and racing down the hallway. Astrid watched her leave, and then turned to Sylvia and cleared her throat. “I was wondering if you had a few minutes to chat.”
Sylvia eyed her with suspicion for a moment before making a sweeping gesture with her arm. As she did, the bell-shaped sleeve of her silk pajamas swung gracefully. “Come inside, won’t you?”
Astrid stepped into a narrow entrance filled with tiny shelves lined with knickknacks—figurines, souvenirs from the San Francisco Seals baseball team, and several decks of playing cards—and followed Sylvia’s slender figure into the main room. It looked much like Bo’s did on the second floor, with its small kitchenette on the back wall and the living and dining area in the front. They passed between two rolling racks of clothes and sat together on a small sofa facing a window. Soft gray light filtered in from the dreary sky outside along with the sounds of midday traffic.