Alchemy of Murder Read online

  It was a dreamlike vision, and yet Elizabeth was wakeful enough to know that it was true. She felt the texture of another time around her, like the fabric of the brightly woven tunic she wore against her skin. She felt the short-cropped hair on her head, and drawing her fingers down the length of her sleek pale throat, she knew that her consciousness had found its way into the body of her long-dead Great Aunt Lucy. The singing of the nuns engulfed her in sorrow as they processed through the gardens behind her.

  She turned away from the sad song, back to the endless green valley that now crashed and rolled before her like an emerald sea. She was at the rail of an ocean liner, staring out at the blankness of a horizon, as vague and uninterrupted as her future.

  These were real memories, Elizabeth thought in her semi-conscious state. But how had she come to share this bond with Lucy? Perhaps there was some biological link between them, a genetic memory, carried in the chromosome that she had inherited, like her father's arched brows or her mother’s angular jaw. Perhaps it was possible to remember the lives of others, even centuries past, who had shared the same bloodlines and carried the collective memory of a family, back to the dawn of its creation. Religions and civilizations had been built around the idea of reincarnation. Could it be nothing more than a misinterpretation of these memories, haunting the minds of those able to become quiet enough to perceive them?

  She felt her feet slipping under her as water poured over her ankles, and she held fast to the ships’s railing in front of her. The horizon line tilted on its axis before her eyes, and she saw the division of sky and water turn on its side before she plunged into the quiet blackness. Surrounded by the cold and darkness in her mind, struggling to stay afloat and pushing back the darkness with her hands, she heard a woman's voice singing. It was a voice she recognized as her own, noble and sweet, but outside of her, carrying a current of sadness into the cold depths below. She reached for it, trying to call for it to return, but she had no voice of her own. She turned her face to the surface of the water, where the light glistened, just out of reach, and saw the face of the beautiful dark woman in the photographs, Marc's mother. She extended her hand, reaching out for help, but the face only smiled. The woman opened her mouth and continued the song.

  “It is my voice,” Elizabeth's mind cried out. “She has taken my voice and my life. I must be avenged. I cannot rest until the evil has been stopped.”

  The clock tower near the university appeared in Elizabeth's mind. It was issuing a column of black smoke from its top, exploding in a shower of lava-like fragments against a dark and troubled sky, like the card in the tarot reading that her neighbor, Loretta, had warned her about.

  Chapter Three

  Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles

  “You got the TOWER,” Loretta said, unable to hide a note of excitement in her voice. “That always means major change. Don't worry though honey. Sometimes it only means a new hair color and a change of husbands, nothing to get excited about.”

  “There does seem to be a lot of new things going on lately,” Holly Driscoll said, looking up from her manicure. “In fact, I met this young man the other day, a painter. He has arranged to show me his portfolio.”

  Loretta let out a hoarse laugh.

  “That's quite a racket you have there… having young men coming around begging for you to take an interest in them. What's he like?”

  Holly examined her cuticles coyly before answering.

  “He's good looking, younger than I am, and claims to have ability. One can only hope what that means.” The two women laughed in unison. “He says he paints nudes and classical themes. He seems so charming. It could be frighteningly embarrassing if he's bad. I honestly hope he has some shred of talent, so I can pretend to be encouraging without being struck dead by lightning for lying.”

  “Let's see what else the cards have to say, particularly about him,” Loretta said, flipping another card into her palm from the top of the deck.

  The face of the card in her palm showed the winged skull of the goat. “THE DEVIL,” she said with a deep rumbling in her throat. “That's not such a good sign because it means separation. Let's pull another to cross it.”

  She closed her eyes in concentration and pulled another card from the deck and flipped it onto the last at a right angle.

  “Now you got THE LOVERS. How odd,” Loretta said. “I got these same cards in a reading for another friend just the other day.” She knitted her brow and tried to fathom the similarities.

  “I do hope this friend is incredibly wealthy and in love,” Holly said with a jaded chuckle. “I never realized how much I missed having some romance in my busy little life until I got wind of the possibility.”

  Holly dipped her other hand into the foamy water and waited for what Loretta had to say.

  “All I can tell you is that there is some element of risk. There is something there that is not what it appears to be, because these two cards are at odds with each other.”

  “I knew it was too good to be true.” Holly let out a snort of disdain. “I mean, after all, who am I kidding. I'd wager he's more than ten years younger than I am and needs my help to get where he wants to go. The point is to have some fun and get carried away just a little. What harm is there in that?” she sighed. “If I'm dealing with some charmingly handsome opportunist, it's my job to provide him with just enough opportunity to keep him interested without getting hurt myself.”

  “There's more to it than that,” Loretta added with hesitation, trying to visualize the words she needed to convey her thoughts. “It’s as if there is real danger of some kind. I can't tell you what it is, but it’s something menacing.”

  Holly let out a low whistle.

  “I'm afraid all you've succeeded in doing is piquing my curiosity about this young man. Where before I found him entertaining, now I find him totally fascinating.”

  She threw her head back and roared in the way that only those who are truly in control of their lives can. She patted Loretta's hand with her damp fingers.

  “Don't look so worried,” she said. “In most of these quiet little stillborn affairs, the only thing at risk is money, and I have lots of money.”

  Loretta tried to mirror her client's confident smile as she watched Holly change out of the smock and back into her silk blouse. She stared down at the cards on the table and wondered what this woman had in common with Elizabeth Winslow.

  Chapter Four

  Lake Hollywood, Los Angeles

  Elizabeth rounded the southeast corner of the reservoir, breathing hard and speaking in disconnected fragments.

  “Glad you agreed to come running?” she asked between breaths.

  Marc nodded.

  “I can hardly believe you talked me into this,” he puffed out the words. “I'm supposed to be an artist, a degenerate, by society's standards. How would it look if anyone saw me doing anything as healthy as jogging?”

  “If I can give up the unparalleled pleasure of smoking cigarettes to get in shape, you can at least encourage me by coming along,” Elizabeth said, as she darted out ahead of him into a full run.

  Together, they sprinted the long side of Lake Hollywood, finishing the last of the intended laps. Elizabeth slowed to a stop and leaned against a pine tree to catch her breath.

  “By the way,” Marc asked, “have you heard anything about the Raymond case? How's the little girl? Has she been able to tell them anything?”

  Elizabeth shook her head.

  “No, she's still in therapy, on massive doses of thorazine, not knowing what's real from what isn't.”

  “Poor kid,” he sighed.

  “How is your back? Does it hurt?” she asked.

  Marc shook his head.

  “It amazes me that four days after ripping yourself apart on a jagged rock, you are able to run around with your heart pumping full throttle, and not be in any pain.”

  “Just a he-man I guess,” he laughed.

  Elizabeth smiled. Once again, he had
surprised her by being in sharp contrast to the image of self-absorbed sophistication he projected. She would have guessed him to pamper himself for weeks as a result of the accident, milking the fact that he endured twenty-six stitches for all the sympathy it could muster from the most inconsequential passerby. But he had not. Instead, he had called her the next day and told her that he had an appointment to see a doctor that would take up most of the morning, and would be in late. He arrived in the afternoon and set to work pulling microfilm from the library of Soviet research that she had requested, without once complaining or appearing to be suffering in the slightest.

  He flopped down in the grass and wiped his damp face with his neckerchief.

  “So, tell me more about this master plan of yours, this revelation that you had about reincarnation while watching me sleep,” he asked.

  Elizabeth leaned against the tree like a sage of the forest and explained.

  “My plan, as you call it, deals with the question of reincarnation. Were you actually Cleopatra... a dazzling and exciting prospect... or Adolph Hitler… a personality that no one will want to claim as theirs in a former life? The question remains. Were we actually other people, or just responding to the ideas of what these archetypes represent for us. There is also the possibility that our memories of other lives are just that, memories, but real ones from people who shared the same bloodline as us. The blood is the link to history, containing fragments in its DNA of everything it has washed past, every moment in time of those who went before us. It is the physical out-picturing of what the mystics call the Akashic Records, or the collective human memory of all time, since the birth of man in Eden.”

  Marc raised his eyebrows, impressed with the scope of her intentions.

  “Oh, is that all you plan to prove?” he asked, teasing her with his laugh. “It sounds like a travel log of all time. Hadn't you better leave that to someone with a loftier and broader scope and a much bigger budget, like Public Television, or the BBC?”

  Elizabeth laughed. She explained that the notion had come to her after reading an article about a Soviet behavioral scientist, who had trained artists in what he referred to as reincarnation therapy. It had little to do with the reality of repetitive lives, but relied on a belief system that could be planted in the subject’s head through hypnosis. In his tests, several young people, with no particular talent in the areas of drawing or music, were seeded with the notion that they had been the master painter Raphael or the piano virtuoso Franz Liszt in a former life. After weeks of listening to recordings of master pianists, emulating the style of Liszt, or studying the drawings of the master Raphael while in a hypnotic state, the subjects began, not only to take on the temperament of genius, but progressed in such startling leaps and bounds with replicating the original works, that within a short amount of time, they could perform at a level that could truly be called mastery, and might even compose or draw new creations in the style of their assigned Masters. The final stage of the experiment involved de-programming the subjects in the belief that they were reincarnated from those geniuses, and integrating their newfound talent into their present personalities. Within a short period, each of the subjects could play the piano or paint with ease and originality, still maintaining a large degree of the ability they had come to realize, without the benefit of hypnosis or the suggestion that they were or had ever been anyone other than themselves.

  “I find it fascinating,” Elizabeth said, glowing with the inspiration of the idea. “People could be treated with reincarnation therapy for personality deficiencies or nonphysical blocks to their abilities.”

  “I could be trained to paint like Picasso, by making me believe I was Picasso,” Marc interjected.

  Elizabeth was pleased that he grasped the idea so readily.

  But Marc shook his head.

  “What's the point of having two Picassos? It would kill the resale value of the originals and confuse the market in general.”

  “The treatment isn't intended to create new financial markets for art,” Elizabeth hastened to add. “It's to help people remove blocks and develop unknown talents that are dormant in their mind.”

  “I don't like the idea,” Marc answered with a pout. “I've worked a long, hard time to develop what abilities I have. I don’t like the idea of someone being put to sleep for a couple of hours and waking up as full-blown competition.”

  “I'm surprised at what a competitive streak you have,” Elizabeth said, looking past Marc's usual charm into a core of smoldering annoyance. “Besides, I said I got the idea, in part, from reading the article, but it isn't the crux of what I intend to prove. I'm not interested in creating piano virtuosos. What I want to do is prove that one can travel through inherited memory into the past and have access to accurate impressions without the distortion of biased historical account.”

  “You mean, you could trace your way back into Napoleon's mind to see what it felt like to go down at Waterloo, as long as you were in the same bloodline and a direct descendant?”

  “That's about it,” Elizabeth said, thrusting her hands deep into her pockets and breathing in the clean air of contentment.

  Marc let out a low whistle.

  “That's pretty good, but how does one know whether they're a descendant of Napoleon? Twenty deluded New Agers, on the same block, all claim to have been the mean little man in some other life. How do you separate the real goods from the loonies?”

  “By starting with a known quantity. By choosing someone who is descended from an ancestor of note, who lived a life filled with enough accomplishment or notoriety to be traceable in record and have access to that research material in order to bear out the truthfulness of the memories.”

  Marc sprawled back on the grass, broke off a blade of it, and placed it between his teeth. He regarded Elizabeth for a long moment before he smiled. “And just who is this known quantity going to be?” he asked, looking up from under his dark brows.

  “I am,” Elizabeth stated authoritatively.

  Chapter Five

  Lara Raymond’s school, Los Angeles

  Lara Raymond hummed quietly to herself as she sifted through the box of waxy crayons in search of a more vibrant red. She sat at a long table in the art therapy room of the school, filling countless sheets of paper with the violently expressive images that came to her mind. She appeared to be so calm and contained, in sharp contrast to the messy scribbles of anger that lay before her on the table. She took special care to be certain that the unruly smear of color did not find its way onto her hands or the pristine crispness of her starched white cuffs. Her behavior was markedly different from that of previous days, when she displayed uncontrolled rage as she painted her pictures. Today, she appeared eerily placid and calm, as if some other energy controlled her emotions and gave her an ethereal and unreal quality of detachment from the hatred scrawled on the paper before her.

  Miss Auriel peered over the girl's shoulder in curiosity, then preceded to pin the last two drawings on the wall in sequence with the others.

  All at once, she became aware that the child had stopped singing. Without turning to look at her, she could sense a strange presence drawing near, filling the room with a coldness that she could feel in the marrow of her bones. She drew the thin cardigan she wore tighter around her shoulders and turned to see Lara, staring quietly at the wall, smiling as if she recognized some unseen visitor.

  The old woman inched closer on tiptoes, anxious not to disturb the girl's concentration. She watched with rapt attention, as Lara seemed to follow some ghostly intruder around the room with her eyes. Then, as if responding to an unspoken command, the child chose a clean sheet of paper from the stack, placed it squarely in front of her, and began to draw. Unlike her other drawings, the image that took shape was now deliberate, linear and clear. She drew a large, nearly perfect circle, in which she delineated a five-pointed star. The star was drawn so that the points touched the edge of the circumscribed circle. She stopped and waited, appearing
to be listening for instructions that came from outside herself. Her hand hovered over the box of colors until it dipped in and chose an emerald green crayon. Without hesitation, she drew a single human eye inside the pentagon formed within the star's center.

  Miss Auriel stood over the girl, her hands clasped so tightly on the back of the chair in which the child sat that her knuckles had turned white. She craned her thin face out on her neck to get a better look, as she watched Lara inscribe a name in block characters around the outer edge of the crimson circle.

  Lara's expression, which had been placid and calm, now twisted into a humorless smile as the girl erupted into fits of sinister laughter.

  Miss Auriel hurried to the telephone and searched the card file for an unfamiliar number. Quickly, she dialed.

  “Hello, is this Doctor Elizabeth Winslow?” she asked, as she looked back over her shoulder at the small girl who sat rocking with wicked amusement. “I felt I really must call you,” she continued. “It's about Lara Raymond.”

  On the other end of the wire, Elizabeth urged her to continue.

  “She's just drawn something that I find very interesting and I think you need to see it. She's drawn a pentagram of sorts, and around the outside she has written your name.”

  Within the hour, Elizabeth had made her way to the Croft School. She was not only surprised that young Lara had managed to remember her name, but had allowed it significance in one of her drawings during therapy.