by Неизвестный
Anya shrugged. “I really don’t remember. He was kind, I know that. He kept asking me how I was and if I have any mementos from the old days. Actually it was kind of suffocating. I had to get away from him. That’s when I went to the kitchen.”
Miranda relayed that to Jack, and filled him in on what Anya had already told them about the cake and dying while a shadowy figure knelt next to her. “Maybe,” Jack offered, “it was Marvin who followed her, on the pretense of apologizing, only to give her a poisoned piece of cake.”
“Maybe,” Miranda agreed, looking sideways at him. “You really don’t like the men that Anya took up with after she left you, do you?”
“Marvin was cheating with her when she was with me, and Thomas is an entitled jerk. No, I don’t like them.”
Anya floated closer, reaching out to gently brush his cheek. “Poor man. I really hurt him, didn’t I?”
“Yes,” Miranda said a little coldly, “you did. It’s in the past for him, let’s leave it there.”
Anya’s eyes turned to her. “I will. As long as you treat him right.”
“What did she say?” Jack asked, his jaw hanging open a little. Ghosts were all around him. Miranda could understand why he was so stunned by it all. Moving closer, she slid an arm around his waist.
“She told me to look out for you.”
Kyle cleared his throat. “Well. Not exactly. I suppose I won’t split hairs, though.”
With an arched look, Miranda mouthed to him, shut up. She was not going to start dictating messages between the living and the dead verbatim just to satisfy Kyle. All Jack needed to know was that Anya wasn’t going to object to him being with a new love. That was enough.
“So what did you find?” Jack asked her.
“Oh. Well, outside of what Anya told me, I found this.”
She dug out the little box she’d found in the baseboard. She hadn’t had time to open it before but as she brought it out now Anya’s eyes went wide. This was important, whatever it was.
Opening the lid, she and Jack stared inside at a collection of differently sized, brilliant green rocks.
“Emeralds…” That came from Anya, in a voice that was distant and tinny. “My emeralds…”
Chapter 6
“Your emeralds?” Miranda asked Anya.
“Is that what she said?” Jack asked. He picked up one of the stones and held it up to the light to look through it. “These are real. How could she possibly afford these? Hang on, wasn’t there… yeah, there was.”
“Was what?” Miranda asked him. “Stop talking in cop code.”
“Sorry, right.” He put the emerald back in the box. “When I was working in the Northern Territory there was a theft from a bank. The only thing they took was a safety deposit box with two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of emeralds. We could never solve it.”
“You think these are the same emeralds?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s just really coincidental that these show up here, now, in a house where Anya is… was living. Emeralds. Anya. Even Marvin. It’s like all the pieces of my past are coming together in one spot.”
“Yes,” Miranda agreed, her gaze settling on Anya’s ghost. “Odd.”
Anya crossed her arms over herself and floated up toward the ceiling, away from everyone. “I don’t know anything about those. You think if I had emeralds like those I’d be living in a place like this?”
Miranda wasn’t sure how she meant that, or if Anya even realized what she was saying. This house was huge, and grand, and amazing by anyone’s standard. Yes, if she had emeralds like that then she would definitely be able to afford to live here, without a job, with her new boyfriend.
“It can’t be the same emeralds,” Jack finally said. “There were twenty stones in the heist. I only count… twelve here. There’s eight missing.”
Miranda thought she knew why. “Enough, maybe, to sell one or two at a time and have just enough money so no one would suspect you were the thief?”
“Oh, man. Yeah, that makes sense. Steal them, sell one every year or two, live off the proceeds. Yeah, could be. But then how did Anya get her hands on them?”
In the corner of the room, Anya huffed, and disappeared back through the wall. She didn’t like that question.
Miranda thought she knew why.
“Yes, Jack,” she told him. “I think Anya was selling them over the years. I’m sorry, but I’m pretty sure it’s not a coincidence that she and these emeralds both showed up here. Nothing is coincidence, after all,” she said, adding one of her favorite quotes.
“You think she was the thief,” Jack said simply.
Miranda nodded.
Jack started to argue, and then stopped. “I think you’re right. Damn it, she really played me hard, didn’t she? So what about Thomas? He’s here with her. If Anya was selling these little beauties to make money he must have known about it. He must have been involved.”
They looked at each other. It was Kyle who voiced what they were thinking. “That much money at stake… it’d make a fine motive for murder, wouldn’t it? Well. That certainly changes things.”
“Jack,” Miranda said gently. She hated herself for thinking this, but she had to ask. “Are you saying that Thomas might be guilty because you think that as a cop, or as an ex-boyfriend? He was living with Anya, and now here you are dredging up all those old feelings, you know?”
As an answer, he reached out to cup her cheek with his hand. “The only feelings I have, Miranda Wylder, are for you.”
Kyle watched them kiss with keen interest. “Oh, yes. He’s a keeper. How is he at kissing? He looks positively wonderful.”
Miranda nearly choked as she stepped back from Jack, keeping her hands on his shoulders. “Kyle, aren’t you supposed to be up on the roof when we do that?”
Jack looked around the room now, his eyes wide. “Kyle’s here? Is Anya still here, too?”
Miranda tried not to feel a little pang of jealousy that Jack was worrying his ex’s ghost might see them making out. He shook his head, a smile curling just the corner of his lips. “I guess it’s just something I’ll have to get used to, isn’t it. You’ll help me learn?”
“Yes,” she agreed readily. “I will.”
“Me too!” Kyle said brightly.
Miranda contained her eye-roll, but just barely. “Hey, what do you suppose is taking Thomas and Barbara so long to get back here?”
“Maybe Marvin put up more of a fight getting thrown out than Barbara could handle?” Jack sighed, and picked up the box of emeralds again from Miranda’s purse. “Come on. Let’s go make sure everything’s all right. Then I want to ask Thomas some questions about these.”
Just as they entered the hallway, a shot rang out through the house like the sound of muted thunder.
“This way!” Kyle shouted for Miranda to hear, floating off quickly like a blue streak of light down the hall.
Jack and Miranda followed, more because they heard the direction of the shot on their own than because of any helpful guidance from Kyle. The hall took a right turn, and then a left, and then they were at an open doorway leading to a huge kitchen of gleaming tile and new appliances.
There, on the floor, lay Thomas Crowe. Blood was pooling under his body as he lay facedown on all that spotless tile. Miranda saw a blue haze lifting off of him, and she knew it was his ghost, his spirit leaving his body.
The blue light was there, and then it was gone. Thomas’s ghost had just departed to the other side.
“Well,” Kyle remarked. “No unresolved issues with that man’s spirit, apparently.”
There was a hidden note of sadness in Kyle’s voice. He wanted, desperately, to be able to cross over the same way. They just didn’t know what was holding him back.
They didn’t have time to ponder the questions of the universe, however. There was another man in the room. Marvin Locke.
He was holding a gun.
Jack raced forward, easily disarming the shorte
r man, wresting the gun away. It was a very small automatic. Miranda didn’t know much about guns but it had looked small in Marvin’s hand. She saw Jack slide out the part that held the bullets, and then put that in his pocket as the gun itself went into the back of his pants.
“Ow, Jack!” Marvin stepped back, rubbing his stinging hand where Jack had bent the wrist around at a painful angle. “This isn’t what it seems! I didn’t do this!”
“Marvin Locke,” Jack said in a blank tone of voice. “You’re under arrest for the murder of Thomas Crowe.” He took a deep, deep breath, and added, “As well as the murder of Anya Westfield. How could you do this, Marvin?”
A wail of pure anguish assaulted Miranda’s ears. Anya’s spirit materialized in the room through the ceiling from the upper floor. “He did it? Marvin killed me? I can’t believe it! Noooooo!”
Then she disappeared again, flying away through the open door to the hallway this time.
Kyle scrubbed a hand over his face. “That Anya,” he said. “She’s quite the screamer, isn’t she? I’ll go make sure she’s all right.”
He faded away too, floating through the door just as Millie and Barbara came running in.
“What’s all the commotion?” Barbara demanded. Then she saw Thomas’s body on the floor, and her hands flew to her mouth. She closed her eyes and looked away.
Not Millie. She stared down at Thomas through her glasses with a focus that was laser sharp. Then her eyes found the box on the floor. The one with the emeralds inside. The one that Jack had dropped when he disarmed Marvin.
Quickly, Miranda swiped the box up off the floor and held onto it tight. Maybe Millie’s interests in it were innocent.
And maybe not. Miranda wasn’t taking any chances. While everyone was occupied watching the action she carefully opened the box and dumped the emeralds inside her purse.
“I’m calling the local police to come and detain you, Marvin.” Jack already had his cellphone out to make the call. “Don’t do anything stupid before they arrive.”
“Jack, I’m telling you,” Marvin protested. “This isn’t what it seems!”
“Murder weapon in your hand, motive… yeah. Adds up for me. Then again, what do I know? I’m just a police detective.”
“Motive?” Marvin questioned, his voice rising in pitch. “What motive?”
“He stole Anya from you,” Jack said, pointing down at Thomas. “I’m guessing you came back to talk to Anya yesterday in some vain attempt to get her back. When she refused your advances, you killed her. Now you’re back here again for no reason at all, and Thomas dies. With you holding the gun, let’s not forget.”
Miranda was proud of Jack for being able to be so professional in the face of all this. His ex-girlfriend was murdered, and now her current boyfriend too, both apparently by the man who had broken Jack and Anya up all those years ago.
Still, something didn’t feel right to her.
As his call connected and he began talking to whatever police dispatcher had answered, Miranda studied Marvin. He was distraught. Understandably so, perhaps, but it didn’t look like the sort of upset she might expect on the face of a killer who had just been caught.
And how did the emeralds fit into this?
Barbara made a sound that was almost a sob. “I’m going to sit down in the living room. I can’t believe this. Both of my friends are dead.”
“I’ll join you,” Millie offered. “We’ll need to wait for the police.”
Miranda watched them go, making sure they turned toward the back of the house and not the front doors in the opposite direction. The Ravens Falls Police would want to question them.
Marvin was wringing his hands. “Jack, I did not do this. I couldn’t! You remember how I was back then. I was always a lover, not a fighter!”
Jack took a step toward him, but then remembered himself and stopped. He very purposefully shoved his hands in his pockets. “You were so much of a lover that you didn’t care if you were with another man’s girlfriend. Mine, to be precise.”
“Jack, she cheated on you too. If you’ve forgiven her, why can’t you forgive me?”
“This isn’t about that,” Jack growled. “We both saw you in here, holding a gun over Thomas’s dead body.”
“I heard the shot same as you. I came in here and found the gun on the floor. I shouldn’t have picked it up, but that doesn’t make me the killer!”
“You expect me to buy that? Barbara was showing you out the front door, remember? You had no business being in this house still.”
“I told her I knew my way out,” he explained. “Then I stayed in the front entryway waiting for my chance to sneak back in. Before I could, I heard the shot.”
Jack shrugged. “You must really take me for a fool, Marvin. You hooked me into this because you thought my mind would be too messed up with Anya’s death to notice you were the killer. Too bad for you I got over her a long time ago. Maybe not the betrayal the two of you committed, but I had no more feelings left for Anya. I’m just here to do a job.”
“You don’t understand,” Marvin said, miserably. He scrubbed at his face with his hands, searching for the words. “You don’t understand.”
“Then why don’t you explain it to me?” Jack suggested. “Love to hear it.”
That was when the lights went out.
There, in the dark kitchen, Miranda heard the faint sound of footsteps rushing and then Jack’s muffled groan as was pushed off balance. She could just make out the way his body slumped up against the center island counter.
Then, before Miranda could react, someone slammed into her hard enough to knock her off her feet. They took the box out of her hand at the same time, and then they ran away.
Chapter 7
A moment later, the lights came back up.
Marvin was gone. The box was gone. Jack was rubbing the back of his neck, pushing himself back to his feet.
Thomas’s body still lay on the floor.
The killer had gotten away.
“Jack!” Miranda said in alarm, racing to his side to support him with an arm around his waist. “Are you all right?”
“Somethin’ hit me,” he slurred. “Damn, that hurts. Marvin. Had to be him. Gotta find him.”
His hands went frantically to the back of his waistband and relief flooded through his expression as he found the gun was still there.
“Come on,” he told Miranda. “Barbara and Millie are still in the house somewhere. If Marvin finds them I don’t know what he’ll do. And, if he makes it out the front door and drives away, it might be days before we find him again. I don’t want him to have any more time to concoct some sort of alibi.”
Miranda wasn’t so sure that was what was happening. Certainly, Marvin was running from being arrested. But there was no way he could have turned out the house lights. He was standing right here with them when it happened.
Besides, there was something else.
“Jack, whoever hit you took the box from me. It’s gone.”
“What!” Now Jack was really fired up and Miranda didn’t have the opportunity to tell him that the emeralds were safe inside her purse. “Okay. This whole house has to go on lock down. Stay here, and I’ll go look for Marvin. The front door is that way so if you see anyone going by in the hallway, you scream for me as loud as you can.”
“No way. I’m coming with you.”
He took her by the arms, and looked into her eyes with a very serious expression. “Miranda, please. I’m pretty sure that I love you. I couldn’t bear it if something happened to you.”
Those words swept her off her feet in the most beautiful way possible. If only they weren’t standing over a dead body, in a house where the spirit of another dead girl was wandering around somewhere, and where a killer was still roaming free, the moment would have been perfect.
Such was her life, Miranda reflected.
“Jack… I don’t know what to say.”
“Say you’ll stay right here, where you’ll
be safe, until the police arrive.”
Miranda was too independent to stay on the sidelines while the man did all the work. That was just something Jack was going to have to get used to. She was about to tell him so, when Kyle and Anya floated into the room, seeming to come straight through the refrigerator door.
“Miranda!” Kyle exclaimed. “Anya just remembered something. It’s important!”
“Hold on,” Miranda said to Jack. “Kyle has news.”
Jack looked all around, and then gave up, knowing he wasn’t going to see anything other than empty space.
“Go ahead,” Kyle prompted Anya. “Tell them what you told me.”
“It’s just…” The redheaded ghost lowered her eyes and fiddled with her fingers. “I apparently wasn’t a very good person in my past. I remember now, after seeing that box of emeralds you had. I stole that. Back when I was with Jack. Only, it wasn’t just me.”
“You had an accomplice,” Miranda filled in the blank. “Of course. Jack, I think I know what these murders are about. I think I might know who the killer is, too.”
“What?” he asked, baffled. “Of course we know who it is. It’s Marvin. What did Kyle say?”
“Well, it’s actually more what Anya said. She’s confessing to stealing the emeralds. While she was with you,” Miranda added, slowly, knowing what an impact that truth would have on Jack.
His face fell. “Just like we figured. She was unfaithful to me, so why shouldn’t she be a thief, too? Oh, wait. Of course. Now I get it!” He stared up at the ceiling, more or less where Anya’s spirit hovered. “All that time, we couldn’t figure out who did the robbery. It was because I kept talking to you about it, wasn’t it, Anya? Oh, you must have thought I was such an idiot. All the times I told you what was going on in the investigation. You used that information to stay one step ahead of the police, didn’t you? You used me!”
Anya’s spirit shivered, and she shrank back from Jack’s anger. Not that Miranda blamed him. What was he supposed to feel, knowing that the depths of Anya’s betrayal went even further than he had ever suspected?