by Ally Shields
Maggie hid a smirk. Gordon had already told them more than they’d known. Lizzie hadn’t mentioned her sister belonged to a coven or any organization of witches. Was it the Witching Hour Society? Maggie was dying to ask. But she stayed quiet for fear of making Gordon more wary.
Josh took the lead. “We aren’t asking for secrets, but the ball is a public event. Perhaps you can talk about that event—how it’s organized, who’s in charge…even the selection of high priest or priestess.”
Gordon seemed mollified by his initial assurance but cooled instantly when he mentioned the top witch contest. “The only public sponsor is the Witching Hour Society,” she said tersely. “The individuals and groups who attend aren’t always affiliated and may not be known to the Society. Donations to the event are often anonymous. As for the competition, the rules are listed on our website.” When Josh continued to wait, she added, “Basically, it’s the person who can carry off the most elegant yet historically relevant gown—or man’s attire, although I don’t think there’s been a male winner for years.”
“How are the winners chosen?” Josh asked.
“By judges, of course. A committee of six voted in each April by the sponsors.”
“Even the anonymous ones, I assume, who stay hidden behind organizational names,” Maggie interjected. “Oh, I understand why people don’t want their affiliation known,” she went on over Gordon’s sniff of disapproval, “but it’s still secretive.” And therefore, subject to behind the scenes manipulation.
Maggie was glad she’d kept quiet until now. Gordon’s defensive, know-it-all responses had confirmed her insider status with the Witching Hour without anyone asking, particularly that one telling slip, “our website.”
Josh kept the conversation on track. “How is the contest handled? Do participants sign up or are they nominated? Do they compete on stage? Make speeches?”
Gordon’s tone turned condescending. “This isn’t a Miss Witchcraft pageant. No speeches, and certainly no stage parades. Anyone can compete, as long as they register by April first. The night of the ball, the contestants mingle with the crowd. Each wears a black rose with a numbered ribbon on their left wrist or lapel. The judges observe them throughout the evening, turn in their choices by number, and the winner and the four top finalists are announced at midnight.”
“I assume the priestess or priest reigns for the rest of the evening. What authority do the finalists hold beyond that night?” Maggie asked.
Gordon paused. “They have the title until next year’s ball.”
As if deciding she’d said enough, Gordon kept the rest of her responses short, mainly yes or no. She balked over further questions about the Witching Hour and attempted to turn the tables. “I don’t see how this has anything to do with Val’s death. What progress have you made on it? Do you have a suspect? Will there be an arrest soon?”
“I’m afraid we can’t discuss the details of an ongoing investigation,” Josh said. “These things take time. Unless you have other information for us, I believe we’re done for today.” He stood. “We appreciate your cooperation.”
Yeah, right. Maggie was relieved when Gordon left. The woman’s negativity was exhausting.
The third interviewee was the exact opposite. Judy Gundermann’s friend, Rita Smith, was bubbly and energetic, eager to help in any way she could. In spite of that, she didn’t add much beyond confirming what they already knew.
“Sorry, I couldn’t answer more of your questions,” she said as she pushed back her chair to leave. “It was fun dressing up and going to the ball with Judy, but I don’t belong to any groups. As far as I know, she didn’t either. Some of them are very hard to join. I heard the Witching Hour is very exclusive and invites only the competition winner into full membership. I suppose that’s why Judy wanted to win.”
Maggie raised her brows. “Only winners? It must be a small organization.”
“Actually, I hear it’s pretty large,” Rita said. “There are other, less public ways of achieving membership…if you know the right people.” She gathered up her handbag. “Personally, I’ve never understood the fascination with snobbery.”
Josh and Maggie accompanied her to the front hallway before returning to the squad room. They stopped at their desks to pick up messages, and Maggie finally brought up lunch.
“How about getting something to eat? Your snake man is coming in at one-thirty, but that leaves us an hour and a half. I thought we could talk a bit.”
“Love to.” He spoke quickly, his eyes warming as he looked up from his messages. “I have to return a call first, and it could take a few minutes.” He punched in the numbers while he spoke. “I can meet you anywhere.”
But Maggie had caught a glimpse of the note. It was from Ellie. Her heart sank. “Never mind. You’re busy. We can do it another time.” She turned and exited the squad room while he was still saying hello on his phone. She heard him call her name and thought he followed at least a few steps, but she didn’t stop.
Once outside, she hurried to her car she’d left parked in front of the building. So he had to return Ellie’s call first, huh? Fine. She got the message. The ex-fiancée was more important than anything Maggie had to say. She jerked her car door open and slid inside, tossing her bag on the passenger seat and jamming the key in the ignition.
A movement caught her eye as something darted across her handbag. Then she noticed a black spot on the dashboard, and another creeping along the top of the steering wheel. Maggie screamed, sprang from the car, and backed away. A truck squealed to a halt just inches from hitting her.
“Maggie, what the hell?” Josh and two other officers raced toward her. One of them had his gun out.
“Don’t touch me,” she ordered, her voice rising as she backed away. “Spiders. Black widows. I think they’re on me.”
Josh grabbed her shoulder and spun her around. “I don’t see any. Can you feel them under your clothing?”
“You’re joking, aren’t you? It’s like they’re creeping all over me.” She took a quick breath. “But maybe I got out fast enough.” She had enough sense left not to strip in the street.
Josh checked her over again, under her collar and inside the cuffs of her short sleeves. “I don’t see anything.”
“Jesus,” one of the other cops said, peering through the windows of her car. “There must be two dozen in there. Piss somebody off lately, York?”
By now they’d collected a crowd, mostly fellow cops. With no one hurt or in immediate danger, Maggie’s discomfort and embarrassment grew. She stifled a nearly frantic need to run her hands over her arms and down her clothes searching for spiders.
She’d be hearing arachnid jokes for weeks. It was the cop way of dealing with their macabre lives. The levity started when a lab tech ran out of the station waving a can of heavy-duty bug spray.
He paused with his hand on the car door. “Last chance, detective. You want me to catch the little beasties for you? I hear they make touchy-feely pets.” The tech made like his fingers were spider legs walking up his arm.
Even Josh failed to hide his grin. Maggie grimaced and suppressed a shudder, trying to match their mood, but it wasn’t going to be possible until she’d showered and knew there wasn’t a spider lurking inside her clothing or buried in her hair. She itched everywhere. “You’re welcome to them,” she retorted. “In fact, you can have the whole damned car. And when you’re through laughing yourself silly, see if you can get any fingerprints. I want to know who did this.” She tossed him the keys and turned away.
“Where are you going?” Josh asked.
“Home to shower. I’m not getting back in that car. Not today, maybe never.”
He finally laughed but kept stride with her. “Can’t say I blame you, Red. Come on, I’ll give you a ride.”
She frowned at the nickname. “Don’t you have a call to make?”
“It’ll keep.”
Maggie was too freaked out to refuse the ride. Anything to get her hom
e to that shower. She rode in uneasy silence, hoping nothing would crawl out of her clothes, and didn’t think to thank him until he pulled up in front of her building.
“I appreciate this, Josh.”
“Go on, get your shower,” he said. “I’ll wait. You’ll need a ride back.”
“I could call a cab—”
“Don’t waste time arguing. I know you’re dying to get in that shower.”
“If you’re staying, then come inside. There’s no reason to wait out here.”
He hesitated. “Are you sure?”
“Now who’s wasting time?”
Josh matched her rapid pace, clearly understanding her urgency. He whipped the front door open, and they took the stairs two steps at a time. While she raced toward the bathroom, he cleared the rest of her apartment—just on the off chance more spiders or other intruders had been deposited there—then settled on the couch and turned on the news.
Making himself right at home, Maggie thought when she heard the TV, but she was strangely comforted by his actions. After ten minutes of scrubbing and rinsing her body and hair, she finally turned off the shower.
“You want me to throw your clothes in the washer?” Josh called.
“You just want an excuse to peek.”
“What if I do?” His voice was closer this time, right outside the bathroom door.
“You’ve seen it before, Josh.”
“Never can see enough, babe.”
Maggie closed her eyes, her cheeks flushed, listening to the huskiness of his voice and absorbing the sensual energy drifting through the door. Tempting…
She grabbed the clothes she’d already shaken twice. Holding them at arm’s length, she opened the door a crack, enough to push them through. “Hot water. Just in case.” She shut the door again and leaned against it.
That hadn’t been necessary. The clothes could have waited, but they were both playing games. She choked off a nervous laugh. It was the best she’d felt in days.
He knocked on the door a few moments later. “Your robe, Miss Modesty. I doubt if you have any clothes in there.”
She cracked the door again, stuck her arm out, and he draped a robe over it. “Thanks.”
“Any time.” Deep, husky for sure. After an infinitesimal pause, his footsteps receded toward the living room.
She smiled at the way his voice made her warm all over. She wrapped the robe around her and slipped into the bedroom to dress. Josh had returned to the TV, and the moment was over.
They picked up sandwiches from a deli on the way back to District 13. When Josh parked in the locked police lot across the street, she noticed her car had been moved from in front of the station. They stopped by the lab to check on progress.
“Latrodectus mactans—southern black widows,” the tech pronounced. “Native to the area, poisonous, of course. A bite or two would have been painful but not likely fatal. Not unless you were allergic, which you’re not. I checked your employee file. However, we collected twenty-seven from your car.”
“Are you sure you got them all?”
“Guaranteed.” His tone was understanding, not teasing this time. “Even after spraying, I wasn’t happy with the idea of driving your car to the lab, so we towed it and then fumigated. The mist reaches everywhere, seams, cracks, and we vacuumed twice. Your car is bug…and spider free.”
Guarantee or not, she’d be checking for herself. “Good. Thank you. How about prints?”
“It must have been wiped. Only one handprint of yours on the driver’s door. Nothing elsewhere that we didn’t expect. Picked up some latents on the passenger side—you, Detective Brandt. No sign of recent damage to the locks, so the intruder probably used a device to mimic your code. He would have been in and out in less than a minute.”
“Is nothing safe anymore?” she muttered.
“Not much. Ain’t technology great?” He handed her the keys. “You can pick it up whenever you want. We’re done.”
Back in the squad room, Maggie checked her chair before sitting down. Sure enough, a large rubber spider lay on the seat. She picked it up, letting it dangle by one leg, and surveyed the room with a rueful half-smile. “OK. Get it over with.”
“Why does a spider need a computer?” someone called out. “To get to her website.”
Among the guffaws, another voice emerged. “What do you call an Irish spider? Paddy long legs.”
And yet another. “Why did the spiders want Maggie’s car? To take it out for a spin.”
A loudly cleared throat ended the teasing. Captain Jenson stood in the doorway of his office. “Don’t you all have work to do?” He turned to Maggie. “Detective York, no pets at the office.”
“Yes, sir.” She dropped the fake spider into a wastebasket, sank into her chair, and glanced at Josh. “You think that’s the end of it?”
“I doubt it.”
So did she. Maggie would be checking her chair and desk…and especially her car for days to come.
Josh opened the deli bag, dividing the contents, and they talked over sandwiches and coffee.
“Any idea who gifted you the spiders?”
She shook her head. “No. Other than it’s got to be someone connected to the Preston case. Poisonous snakes, poisonous spiders. I see a pattern.”
“It’s not the same threat level. Spiders are more like a warning…thumbing his nose at us.”
“They’re still nasty things.” She grimaced. “We’ve ticked somebody off. Watch your back, Josh. You could be next.”
“That’s why I parked in the secured police lot when we came back. But keep in mind whoever did this isn’t necessarily done with you either.”
She gave a short nod and drained the last of her coffee. “The snake man should be here. I wonder if he knows anything about spiders.”
Lance Colby wasn’t what Maggie had envisioned a herpetoculturist would be. If she’d had to guess, she would have pegged the slender young man with serious gray eyes as a budding scientist or even a computer nerd. At least she was half right; he was an academic professor who did his own fieldwork. At twenty-nine, Colby still blended in with the student body, and his deep tan and wiry, muscled arms suggested the beach and tennis courts more than the study of poisonous snakes.
“Is it Doctor or Professor Colby?” she asked.
“Neither, just Lance. Professor is for the classroom, and Dr. Colby was my dad,” he said with a smile. “He started out with nothing but a swamp-education and was proud of the title when he achieved his doctorate. Never lost his love of gators though. I grew up following him around the swamp, but I was more fascinated by the snakes. Yes, I know,” he said, reacting to Maggie’s face, “not an occupation many favor, but I find them intriguing.”
“I guess someone has to,” she owned.
Josh pulled a crime scene photo from the file but left it facedown on the table. “I told you about our case on the phone, but I thought it might be helpful to see photos of the injuries.”
Colby’s eyes flickered to Josh’s hand. “It’s OK to turn it over. I’ve seen bodies mangled by gators.”
Josh handed it to him, and Colby studied it briefly.
“Bit her twice, huh? Snake was riled and released a lot of venom. The herper may have pinched him to get that kind of reaction.”
“A herper. Is that anyone who handles snakes or just a pro?”
“It’s a generic term. But I wouldn’t call an untrained handler anything except stupid. It takes years to safely handle hot snakes.”
“So this was a pro.”
Colby winced. “Unfortunately, I can’t say that. With an hour or two of practice, I could show you the basics of holding the snake behind the head or using snake tongs, and you might get away with it. Some people do…a time or two.” He inspected the photo again. “But why didn’t she run away or fight back? Didn’t anyone hear her scream? Was she unconscious?”
Smart guy. “No head injuries or drugs in her system,” Maggie said. “I can’t explain wh
y she wasn’t heard—although some people are too terrified to scream—but the ME found grab marks, indicating she might have been held.”
“Then you have at least two killers,” Colby said with confidence. “No one could handle a cottonmouth and a frantic woman too. It just isn’t possible.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Maggie stared at the snake expert. “There’s no physical evidence of multiple intruders at the scene. But a killer aided by a reptile pro makes sense.” She glanced at Josh. They’d tossed around the idea of someone hired to do the job, but they hadn’t carried it to the point of putting more than one participant in Preston’s house. Now that Colby explained what it took to control a snake, it was obvious. “So where would they get the snake? Just go to the swamp and catch one?”
“Well, they could,” Colby said doubtfully. “It adds serious risks, but can be done with nets or snake traps. It wouldn’t be my choice. A wild snake is harder to control. Those raised in captivity are at least used to the scent of humans.”
“A purchase from a registered snake breeder should leave a paper trail.” Maggie cocked her head in thought. “Unless there’s a black market on cottonmouths.”
“Which there is,” Colby said. “The laws are strict to do it right. Catching and breeding pit vipers requires a license, and buyers have to hold a separate snake permit. They’re not easy to get. The buyer has to demonstrate a competency in poisonous snake-handling before the state will consider a permit. Some people can’t or simply don’t want to jump through those hoops. So illegal sales occur.”
“By breeders selling on the side?”
“Not often. Most of them respect snakes and don’t want an inexperienced buyer involved. Besides being illegal, it isn’t very profitable.”
“Then where would the killer—or killers—get one?”
“Best guess? An unlicensed swamp hunter, probably hunts and sells gators for a living, and snakes are an extra dollar or two. But good luck finding him. These swamp people are a law unto themselves.”