We were quiet.
I shut my eyes again, let myself start to drift again.
“So?” said Lachlan.
I didn’t open my eyes. “What?” I said, a little irritated.
“You think she’s guilty or not?”
“I don’t know,” I muttered. “What would her motive be?”
“Maybe she actually hated her uncle,” said Lachlan. “Maybe she resented him for some reason or other. And she’s going after this Jacobs guy because she wants to cover up her involvement.”
“Maybe,” I murmured. “But can we talk about this tomorrow, please?”
He chuckled softly. “Good night, Penny.”
“Good night,” I said.
“I love you,” he whispered.
“I love you too.”
* * *
“Well,” said Samuel Jacobs. “Well, hell.” He didn’t look nearly as old as I would have expected him to look. The guy had to be nearly eighty, and yet he looked to be in his forties or fifties. He had brown hair with a few streaks of gray in it, which was pulled into a ponytail at the nape of his neck. He was sitting in an easy chair in his living room, and Gunsmoke was on the television set. He’d muted it when we came in. “Beckett Stanley dead. It’s awful, isn’t it? I’m at that age where everyone I knew keeps dying.”
Lachlan and I exchanged a glance. I knew we both wanted to know why he didn’t look very old, but we didn’t know how to ask without sounding rude.
“Well, the years have been kind to you,” Lachlan said.
Gah. Trust Lachlan to know how to put it.
“Ain’t the years, son,” said Samuel. “It’s my sweet girl, love of my life, Bethesda. She’s a vampire, and she helped me become one too.”
“You have a vampire girlfriend?” I said.
“That I do,” said Samuel. “You met her when you came in?”
The woman who’d let us in had been unremarkable, but that didn’t mean anything. Vampires looked human for the most part. I had thought she must have been his daughter or something, though, because she’d seemed so young. But looking at him now, they both looked middle aged.
“But…” I shook my head. “You’re a member of the Brotherhood. Um, Humans for a Wholesome Tomorrow.” Lachlan and I had even come prepared to this meeting, both of us packing extra talismans. I’d shifted. He’d drunk my blood. We wanted to have as much magic as possible. The last time we’d tangled with the Brotherhood, things had gone badly.
Samuel cringed. “In my youth, I was entangled with that organization, yes. But I have nothing to do with it now. I’m a vampire now, and I obviously have nothing against magical creatures, since I am one.” He surveyed us. “Listen, why are you here? I wouldn’t say that Beckett and I were what you might term friends. I appreciate being told about his death, but I don’t see why I warrant a house call about it.”
“Beckett was murdered,” said Lachlan.
“Murdered?” said Samuel. Understanding flickered across his expression. “I’m a suspect, aren’t I?”
“I don’t know if I’d go quite that far,” said Lachlan. “We’re here to talk to you, let’s leave it at that.”
Samuel sighed. “It’s because of that speech I made about him. I wish like hell I could take back some of the ignorant things I said back then.”
“What speech?” I said.
“You don’t know about the speech?” said Samuel. “Well, hell.” He made a face. “I guess I might as well tell you about it, though. You can find it on youtube pretty easy, I imagine. Wouldn’t do me any good to try to hide things. But you have to understand that it was a long time ago, and I was a different man. Hell, I was practically a kid still. I got involved in the Brotherhood in college. I didn’t have anything against magical creatures at the time, not exactly, but I had to admit they scared the hell out of me. I was afraid of their magic—of compulsion especially. Now, I’d never met a magical creature. Not so much as a drake or a mage. I didn’t know the first thing about what magical creatures did. I was ignorant. But they preyed on my ignorance. The Brotherhood did.”
“How so?” said Lachlan.
“They wanted to recruit people into their little organization, and they did it through fear. They made magical creatures out to be monsters. They said we weren’t safe without a means to fight them off, and that anything we could do to get rid of them was a good thing. I believed them. At the time, it seemed like all my friends were getting sucked into some cause or the other. Some were protesting the war, others were into civil rights, others were just as adamantly supporting the war or segregation or whatever it was. It was a turbulent time. Everyone had something to be angry about. Maybe I wanted something of my own.”
“So, this speech, then?” I said.
“Right,” he said. “When I got into the organization, I was pretty low down on the totem pole, and so I didn’t much give speeches. But what happened was that they found out that I was planning on becoming a lawyer and that I was on the debate team, and they wanted me to write speeches for the head of our chapter on campus. But he was terrible at reading what I wrote, and eventually, I ended up giving the speeches. They were designed to be inflammatory, you realize. We pushed the envelope because we wanted people to get mad. The madder people got, the more attention they’d pay to us, and the more we’d reach the people who agreed with us. We weren’t trying to change minds so much as band together our army, find the like-minded souls.” He took a breath.
Lachlan and I waited.
“Anyway,” he continued, “I gave a speech once on the topic of gargoyle emancipation, and I really lit into Beckett Stanley, who I’d never even met. But he was one of the figureheads of that movement, so I made him my target. I said that gargoyles were worse than animals and that they were very violent and dangerous and that they needed to be put on a leash. I said that Beckett Stanley ought to be taken out back and shot like a rabid dog. Put him out of his misery.” Samuel hung his head. “I’m so ashamed of it now. If I could go back and do it over, I would. I was just a stupid kid running his mouth off.”
“So, you didn’t have anything personally against him?”
“No,” said Samuel. “I don’t now, and I didn’t then. I was only attacking him because he was one of the faces of the movement. I didn’t mean any of it personally. I didn’t want him dead. I swear to you. I never even met the guy, you know?”
“Well, we know that you didn’t personally kill him, since you weren’t at the hospital where he was killed,” said Lachlan.
“Guy was killed in the hospital? But those places are supposed to be safe,” said Samuel. “That’s horrible.”
Lachlan nodded. “It is. Anyway, the only way you could possibly be involved would be if you had paid someone to kill Beckett for you. Would you might letting us look into your phone records, emails, social media, that kind of thing? Then we can rule out any conversations with people who had access to the room where Beckett was killed.”
“Look at all that?” Samuel wrinkled his nose. “Now, I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can get behind that, no. I didn’t do anything wrong. I don’t feel as if I should have to open up my life to the police. If I’ve got a choice on that, my answer is no.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“He doesn’t seem guilty,” said Lachlan from behind the wheel. We were driving back from interviewing Samuel.
“No, I didn’t think so either, but then Paloma’s accusation of him seemed like a long shot,” I said. “Still, why’s he keeping his communication records to himself? He might be hiding something.”
“Might be,” said Lachlan. “Or he may genuinely want his privacy. He’s well within his rights to deny us that information.”
“But if he had nothing to hide, why wouldn’t he let us?”
“I don’t know.” Lachlan gripped the steering wheel. “Still, I don’t like him for this. He’s clearly a vampire. Hasn’t aged in at least twenty years. Probably more like thirty. He obviously doesn’t still hold
some kind of grudge against Beckett. So, to me, it just doesn’t make sense.”
“No, I hear you,” I said. “I just feel like he’s hiding something, and if he’s hiding something, then it makes me nervous.”
“Yeah,” said Lachlan. “It is a little bothersome. What’s in those conversations, right? But it’s probably something that’s got nothing to do with the case. Hell, we’ll probably never know why he’s shutting us down.”
“Maybe we need to dig into him a little more.”
“Maybe,” said Lachlan. “But maybe we need to see if the nurse is the kind of person we think could be taking money to kill someone.”
“I say yes,” I said. “There’s something off about her to me.”
“Really? Because I don’t think there is at all. She seems totally normal to me.”
I shrugged. “Maybe if you talk to her some more, that will change.”
* * *
“Back to talk to me already?” said Sierra Johnson. “Wow, I thought you’d gotten everything you wanted from me.”
“Were you hoping not to talk to us again?” I asked.
“Hoping?” She shrugged. “Maybe a little. I gotta admit, you guys make me a little nervous. All cops do, though. I feel like it’s inevitable that I’m going to screw up, and you’re going to see it.”
“Really,” I said, narrowing my eyes at her.
She bit down on her lip.
Lachlan laughed softly. “Oh, Ms. Johnson, don’t feel that way. We’re just people like yourself. Nothing to be nervous about.” He flashed her a reassuring grin.
The tension seemed to fade out of her frame almost immediately. “Okay, I guess I’m being silly.”
Lachlan was good at putting people at ease. He laughed again. “Just a little silly. And it’s understandable. But you’ll be on your way in a few minutes. Just give us a few more answers.”
“Okay,” she said. “You need to know more about Mr. Stanley?”
“Actually, we were wondering if we could find out a little more about you,” said Lachlan.
“About me?” She looked puzzled. “What do I have to do with the case?”
“You’re not trying to hide something from us, are you?” I asked her pointedly.
She turned to me, eyes wide. “No, of course not. But I barely knew the patient. I only ever interacted with him after he was admitted here last week. I can’t see why you’d need to know about me.”
“It’s routine, that’s all.” Lachlan’s voice had started to take on a hint of Texan drawl. He was still grinning. “We’re just talking to everyone who went into that room, everyone who had opportunity to kill Mr. Stanley.”
“To kill him?” She swallowed hard. “You don’t think that I…”
“Did you?” I said.
She shook her head. “No, I didn’t. Of course not. I would never…” She hugged herself. “Why would I do something like that?”
“You ever read ‘The Monkey’s Paw’?” said Lachlan.
“Um… what?” Sierra made a confused face.
“It’s a short story about a family that gets hold of a dried monkey’s paw that has the power to grant them three wishes. What do you think they wish for with their first wish?”
“More wishes?” said Sierra.
Lachlan laughed. “No. Money. And they get it, only it comes at a price. The money is paid out upon the death of their son. Then they wish him back to life, but when it becomes clear he’s crawled himself out of the grave and is some kind of monster, they use the last wish to wish him back into the ground. People do all kinds of crazy things for money.”
Sierra narrowed her eyes. “You’re saying you think someone might have paid me to kill him?”
“You had access to the drug and the syringe,” I said. “You knew where the storage cabinet was. You knew which drug would kill him. What you don’t have is motive. Unless that motive was financial.”
“But I didn’t get paid for anything,” she said. “You can look at my bank accounts. You can run a check on that, right? You’d see that I don’t have any more money.”
“Relax, Ms. Johnson,” said Lachlan.
“Relax?” She turned on him. “You’re accusing me of committing a crime here, and you want me to relax?”
“We’re not accusing you of anything,” said Lachlan.
“It sure sounds like you are,” she said.
“We’re just asking you a few questions.”
“I haven’t heard a question lately,” she said.
“How long have you worked at the hospital?”
“Only a few months. I transferred here, went in a different direction. I used to work labor and delivery, but I wanted to try a different kind of nursing. But I wasn’t prepared for this. In my last position, none of the patients ever died. Not once. I knew that a mom or a baby could die, but it never happened. And then, here… well, losing Mr. Stanley has been a little hard on me, okay? And then having you two say I killed him—”
“You’re putting words in our mouths,” said Lachlan.
“I didn’t kill him,” she said. “I didn’t.”
* * *
“She was twitchy,” I said. I was at the stove, stirring a pot of chili that I was making for dinner. “I think she’s hiding something too.”
“I didn’t get that sense from her,” said Lachlan from the living room, where he was sitting with Wyatt. Wyatt was crawling around, pulling himself up on the coffee table and the couch. Lachlan was making sure the little guy didn’t hurt himself.
“No?” I said. “Not after all of that?”
“Well, she told us that police make her nervous,” said Lachlan. “So, I think we saw her nervous. Plus, think about how you felt when you were accused of murdering Alastair.”
I sighed. I had been pretty defensive, I guessed. “Okay, fine. Right. So, her reaction proves nothing.”
“It doesn’t,” he said.
“So… we just forget about her, then?”
“We should double check what she told us,” said Lachlan. “Make sure it’s true that she really is a nurse, and that she really did work in labor and delivery, that kind of thing. As long as all that checks out, then I think we drop both her and Samuel the vampire to the bottom of our suspect list.”
“All right,” I said. “So, where’s that leave us? Paloma?”
“And the son, Dashiell, and the lover, Rowan,” he said. “We haven’t talked to either of them yet.”
“You’re right,” I said. “We need to talk to them. Does it feel like we’re not making progress on this case? Like it’s going more slowly than usual?”
“Maybe a little,” he said. “It’s probably a combination of having Wyatt and the fact that we have to talk to the gargoyles at night. Slows us down. Like we’ve got to see Dashiell, but we can’t go talk to him during normal business hours.”
“Do you want to go see him tonight?” I said. “After dinner?”
“Not particularly,” said Lachlan. “I’m exhausted. You?”
“Well… we shouldn’t wait too long, though.”
“If Wyatt goes down easy, then we’ll talk about it,” said Lachlan. “Otherwise, I say we try to see him tomorrow.”
“Okay,” I said.
* * *
But after dinner, I got a call from the guy working the front desk at the hotel. He said some guy in a suit was down in the lobby to see me.
I left Wyatt with Lachlan and hurried down to the lobby.
The man was sitting on one of the benches near the door. When he saw me approach, he got up. He was wearing a gray suit with a canary yellow tie. He smiled, but his smile was too big. It didn’t look sincere.
I felt wary. “Can I help you?”
“Are you Penelope Caspian?” he said.
“That’s me,” I said.
“You own this property?”
“Yes,” I said.
He took a thin envelope out of his breast pocket and handed it to me.
I opened the
envelope. “What’s this about?” I took out the letter, but the words just swam in front of me.
“It’s a notice of a possibility of rezoning,” said the man.
“Rezoning?” I looked up at him. “Rezoning what?”
“Well, this property is currently zoned for commercial interests, but there’s an interested party lobbying to have this recategorized as residential.”
“Residential? This is oceanfront property,” I said. “You don’t zone oceanfront property as strictly residential.”
The man shrugged. “Well, it hasn’t gone through or anything. It’s only a possibility.”
I felt my heartbeat picking up speed. I owned my hotel, but if it was suddenly in a residential zone, I’d be forbidden to use it as a hotel. I would be without any income at all. I had savings, but not enough to support us all indefinitely. And I did support a lot of people. I paid both Felicity’s and Connor’s salary. I also gave Vivica money for watching Wyatt—plus I gave her a place to live. And, of course, there was Wyatt to think of. I needed income. I needed to support my little boy. “How could this happen? How could anyone consider rezoning here?”
“Well, like I said, there’s an interested party lobbying for it.”
“What interested party?” I said through clenched teeth. I figured he wouldn’t tell me, but I had to ask.
“Why, the Eaglelinx corporation,” said the man, smiling his too-wide smile. “Of course, I think they might be willing to drop the whole thing if they had certain assurances from certain other parties.”
“You mean me?” I said. “You mean… they’re doing this to try to shut me up.”
The man shrugged. “I couldn’t be sure of that. But if you did have something that was less than glowing to say about the corporation, and you wanted to keep your hotel, you might consider keeping your sentiments to yourself from now on.”
CHAPTER SIX
“Penny, calm down.” Lachlan had taken me by the shoulders. “Now, start at the beginning. What happened?”
“Eaglelinx is trying to take the hotel from me,” I said. “It’s something about zoning.”
Fire Brand (City of Dragons Book 6) Page 4