When I finally left my office and went out to the main bar area, I looked around for Duncan, but he was nowhere in sight. I poured myself a glass of wine and carried it over to where Cora was sitting. Before I had a chance to say anything, she offered up the very information I wanted.
“If you’re looking for the hunky detective, he left,” she said. “And he looked really sad when he did. What did you do, Mack, break his heart?”
I didn’t know about his heart, but mine was definitely aching. “It’s complicated, Cora.”
“How so? The two of you make a great team. And it’s obvious that you both like each other. In fact, I’d say it’s a little more than like.” She punctuated this last statement with a salacious wiggle of her eyebrows.
She was right about one thing; I definitely felt something for Duncan Albright. That was part of my problem. I wasn’t sure if I was helping him with this crime stuff because I truly wanted to be involved with doing something good that would better the community, or if I was doing it simply because I was attracted to him and wanted to please him and spend time with him. I suspected it was a combination of the two.
Plus I had some lingering doubts about his attraction to me. There were times when I felt confident Cora was right, but there were other, more cynical times when my inner voice suggested that his interest in me might be a fleeting infatuation, or be solely because of how my little talent could be of use to him. Was I just fooling myself ? Was I behaving like some besotted teenager with a schoolgirl crush? I found it ironic that I possessed this so-called talent that made me more sensitive to the world around me, and yet I didn’t seem to be able to sense anything with regard to my own love life.
I looked around the bar at my customers, many of whom, along with my employees, were like family to me. Were they all looking at me now with pity, seeing me as the poor lonely girl who would do anything for a little attention?
“Sit down,” Cora said, gesturing toward the seat across from her. “I want to try something.”
Curious, I did as she instructed. She tapped some keys on her laptop and after a moment she said, “What sort of sensations did you get when you were with your father?”
I gave her a confused look, unsure what she was going for.
“I mean, when the two of you shared a special moment,” Cora explained. “When you were a child and you curled up in his lap, or hugged him, or had one of those special father–daughter moments, what sensations did you have?”
I saw where she was going then and thought I knew what she was aiming for. “Most of the time I felt a warm, secure pressure over my shoulders and back, as if I had a cozy blanket wrapped around me. I also remember times as a child when he would poke his head in on me at night after he’d closed down the bar and come up to the apartment. He always checked on me, and there were times when he would come and sit beside me on my bed and it would awaken me. When that happened, he would try to talk me back to sleep by telling me stories about things that happened in the bar, or sometimes things about my mother—how they met, the early days of their marriage, how excited she was about being pregnant, that sort of thing. Sometimes he would make up stories about fantasy lands populated with anthropomorphic creatures, most of whom were thinly disguised versions of some of our regular customers. For instance, the Signoriello brothers would appear as Neapolitan Mastiffs, an Italian breed of dog known for protecting home and family. It made sense because both the dogs and the brothers were big, and the brothers were insurance salesmen so, like the dogs, they were in the business of protecting home and family. And when I looked up the dogs in a book at the school library, they had these funny, sweet, kind of saggy faces like the Signoriello brothers have.”
Frank and Joe Signoriello have a strong sense of family, though their own families have spread out like the tufts of a dandelion gone to seed. As a consequence, they have adopted me as their family, an arrangement that suits me just fine.
“Another character Dad often used was a chatty parrot named Lilly that was very vain and constantly preening,” I went on. “The parrot talked with a heavy New York accent that my father pulled off surprisingly well. It was obvious to me that the parrot was based on a woman named Molly who used to come into the bar all the time hunting for men to date. She dressed in bright jewel colors, she had the New York accent, and she was forever taking a compact out of her purse and primping.”
“How fun,” Cora said.
“It was, and I loved it when my father would tell those stories. He only did it on Friday and Saturday nights during the school year because I would get so interested in the stories and the characters that I couldn’t go back to sleep.” I paused and smiled. “I always told Dad he should write those stories down and try to sell them as children’s books.”
“I take it he never did,” Cora said.
I shook my head. “He kept saying he would, one of these days. Maybe once he retired he would have done it, but he never got the chance.”
“I doubt your dad would’ve ever retired,” Cora said.
“Yeah, you’re probably right.”
“But your memories of those times are exactly what I’m after,” Cora went on. “Can you remember what other synesthetic reactions you had during those special moments you and your dad shared?”
“A taste,” I said. “Warm and chocolaty, like hot cocoa.”
Cora typed and said, “A taste for you is usually associated with a sound, something you see, or a tactile sensation. Which do you think this was?”
“Sound,” I said without hesitation. “It was the sound of his voice when he talked to me in a certain way.”
Cora shot me a curious look. “You seem pretty certain of that. Have you had the same experience with others?”
I nodded and felt myself start to blush. “Yes, with Duncan. His voice also makes me taste chocolate.”
“Interesting,” Cora said, tapping away on her keys. “Do you taste chocolate when you hear any other people’s voices?”
I thought about it a moment and realized I didn’t. “Not that I can recall. I do experience tastes when I hear other people’s voices, particularly men’s voices, but not chocolate. Most women’s voices have a taste, too, but some manifest as a visual.”
Cora looked up from her computer for a moment and narrowed her eyes at me. “Do you taste something when you hear my voice?”
I laughed. “It depends on your tone,” I said. “You always taste like barbeque sauce, but sometimes it’s a sweeter taste than other times. At the moment, you sound rather tangy.”
She considered this a moment. “I’ll take tangy,” she said. “What about Zach?” she asked then, referring to my recent ex-boyfriend. “What did his voice taste like?”
“Fresh baked bread. Nice . . . comforting . . . ordinary,” I concluded with a shrug.
“Interesting,” Cora said, once again tapping away at her keys. “Let’s get back to your dad. What other experiences did you have with him? What about when he touched you or hugged you? What did that trigger?”
“An undulating image of color—sort of a blue-green shade—like soothing waves on the ocean.”
“I think that was your interpretation of the love you felt emanating from your father when he hugged you.”
“Perhaps,” I said, unsure.
“And when you touch Duncan, what happens then?” Cora asked. I blushed—a curse of us pale-skinned redheads—and Cora read me like a book. “I gather the two of you have touched a lot lately. Did you finally take your relationship to the next level?”
“We did,” I admitted in a low voice after looking around to see who might be within hearing distance. “When he touches me, I get a zing of a shock, like an electric current, and I tend to see hot red-and-yellow jagged lines.”
Cora cocked her head to one side and considered this. “What do you suppose that means?” she asked me.
I smiled. “Near as I can tell, it’s the fires of hell.”
Cora let out a hearty laugh. “Why would you think that?”
“I don’t know. For me, the act of feeling includes both tactile senses and emotional ones. I can’t always tell which is which if I’m touching someone I have strong feelings for, or who may have strong feelings for me. For instance, there were times when Zach and I were alone and I would catch him looking at me a certain way. I could tell just from his expression that he was having fond thoughts about me, and that would trigger a visual manifestation. The same thing happened at times with my father.”
“What sorts of visual manifestations?” Cora asked, once again typing away.
“Typically swirls of colors—soothing, comforting, relaxing colors.”
“So these visual things made you feel comforted and loved?” Cora suggested.
“Yes, I suppose they did.”
“What do the visual manifestations you get with Duncan make you feel?”
“Fireworks,” I said with a fond smile. Then the smile faded. “But at times I also feel unrest and discomfort. Maybe it’s the things he sees in his work that cause it. I’m not sure if the manifestations are triggered by what I feel when he touches me, or by the emotion I sense coming from him.”
“Maybe they’re triggered by the emotion you sense coming from you,” Cora suggested.
It was an unsettling thought, yet it made sense. Maybe my body and my skewed senses were trying to tell me something. It was then that I made the decision not to work with Duncan anymore. If there were shared feelings between us that might lead to something permanent, it would have to happen without our working relationship. The decision felt right to me, and I thanked Cora for her help and insight.
Unfortunately, my newfound resolve dissolved an hour later when Duncan called and told me about Davey Cooper.