by Livia Quinn
“Oh, River.”
I reached inside for the elaborately decorated 11th century Chinese vase. Securing it with both hands, I lowered it gently—
“Freeze. Police.”
Chapter 9
Murdering someone a little too much for you?
* * *
Tempe
For a second I thought I’d repeated myself, but my windsense warned, human male in the room. I started to turn holding on tightly to my brother’s bottle.
“I. Said. Freeze.”
The menacing voice was familiar so naturally I ignored the command, and spun slowly on my heel to face Sheriff Whatshisname, his gun aimed at my chest in a classic two-handed grip.
“Um, I know this looks bad.” Oh yeah, very bad. “Don’t you have something better to do than turn up everywhere I go, Sheriff,” I asked, pulling my cheeks up into a half smile and pretending confidence I didn’t feel.
He didn’t return the smile. This man has no sense of humor. So I appealed to his sense of duty. “How could you just walk past that dead…” Careful… “Aren’t you goin’ ta do somethin’?” I waved my free arm in the direction of the door, and landed against the lockers.
“Put down the vase,” he said, pointing at it with his gun.
“Not—” I shook my head. “No.” I said, gripping the amphora tighter.
“What happened here, Ms. Pomeroy?”
“Uh-oh, yer mad, huh?” One polyester clothed hunk blurred into two. I blinked quickly.
“Are you…” His eyebrows crashed together into downward dogs as he stepped closer to me, put his face next to mine and sniffed.
“Jesus, you’re drunk.”
He looked over at the wet bar, his eyes hardening to unfriendly gray steel. “What’s the matter? Murdering someone a little too much for you?” He grabbed for the vase and got a hand on it.
I clasped it tighter as his words sank in. “What are you talking about?” I shrieked.
“Let. Go.”
“No,” but I dared not tug too hard. “It’s mine—well, River’s.”
“Who’s River?”
“My brother.”
At the risk of damaging the irreplaceable vessel, I relinquished it. “Please, please, be careful with it. It’s...” I shook my head. Sober up, Tempe. I willed clarity to return. It ignored me.
“Is this what you hit the guy with?”
“What guy?”
“You know, the nude dead guy in the other room? The one with his face smashed away? Ring any bells?”
“Oh, him.” My head spun worse now that I’d given up the amphora. “I gotta siddown.” I did—hard, on the bench in front of the lockers. I pressed my fingers to my temple and closed my eyes. Bad move. I grabbed the bench and opened them again. “I remember now... ”, the fae, the blood... the smell. “I think I’m going to throw up.” Gagging, I bent over and a plastic lined trashcan appeared in front of me.
Think of something else—River, on his first day as a Djinni, Phoebe on my ninth birthday, Dutch... I stifled a whimper. I would not lose it in front of this man. He’d already seen me in too many compromising situations today. It would be one embarrassment too many.
He placed his gun into its holster and reached for my elbow. “Come with me.”
I rested my forehead in my palm as he pulled me up. My words kept getting tangled around my tongue. If I just concentrated harder, I could prom-pron- prolly…figure out what to say. I waved a hand toward the door. “Why don’ you jus’ go do what you have to do? I’ll be here… when you get back.” I looked up at his narrowed eyes and grim face. Mad again.
“Nope. You’re coming with me.” With one hand wrapped around the neck of the bottle and the other grasping my elbow, he pulled me along with him to the entryway, stopping by the man on the floor. This time the stench was more than my roiling stomach could handle.
“Ag—” I turned just far enough away from the body in front of me to let loose in the direction of the sheriff’s trousers and shiny black work boots. So much for pride. Only his strong arm around mine kept me from collapsing on top of the body. Which was probably what he was trying to protect.
He looked at the ceiling for a good five seconds, then led me through the dining room toward the restrooms. He pushed me down in a chair and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. “Here.”
What a swell guy, I thought as I closed my eyes, the world spinning behind my lids.
The snick of metal caused me to look up but not before he’d handcuffed my wrist to the seat back and walked out the front door, taking River’s amphora with him, leaving me sitting eye level with the long silver utility handle on a door marked, “MEN”.
My sentiments exactly.
Chapter 10
This isn’t a cozy TV mystery and you are not a nosy sleuth.
* * *
Jack
When I got back from changing and putting the weird vase in my cruiser, she was deep in thought—or on the verge of passing out. She shook her head, chuckling.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
She jumped. “You’re very… stalky.” She squeezed her eyes shut gave her head a shake trying again, “Stealthy.”
I snapped on latex gloves and waited.
“I was just thinking what a bad mail day this’s been. Get it? Bad M-A-L-E day?”
Hell, she was going to go hysterical on me any minute. “It hasn’t been a piece of cake for me, either.” I unlocked the cuff and rubbed her wrist.
“Yeah, but this’s, this has been withoutta doubt, the wors’ day of my entire life.” Her eyes focused on the wall behind me so hard, I started to turn, then her face fell and a sob bubbled up from her throat. She turned those watery blue eyes up to mine. “Except…” she swallowed, “the day Phoebe told us Dutch was d-dead.”
My voice was sharp. “Who’s Dutch?” Two dead people in the life of a person Pomeroy’s age was unusual and something to remember in the big scheme.
She ignored me, as usual. Then, her eyes filled with misery, her breath hitching. ”I’m sorry.” She breathed in unsteadily. “I’m worried about my brother.”
“Who’s Dutch?” I repeated. Lawmen are as tenacious as bird dogs.
“My father,” she said quietly, a tear trailing down her cheek.
I felt an unfamiliar little bump in the vicinity of my heart, which I’d thought a granite wasteland. An honest to God heartfelt tear had never sprung from my ex’s tear duct. As a matter of fact, I could have sworn that once, I smelled onion. She’d been a champion manipulator and a pathological liar.
You can imagine I’m more than a bit hardened toward a weak acting female. But I’d had more stimulating, bizarre, intriguing contact with this woman in one day than I’d had with any in the last three years; the word weak didn’t fit.
Just to be sure, I looked down at her hands. No onion.
Maybe it was a sign. Of what? Besides the fact that I didn’t believe in signs…in one day, we’d gone from mutual attraction to standing on opposite sides of a dead body. Tempest Pomeroy was turning out to be a trouble magnet of the first magnitude. I groaned inwardly. It was…problematic, and yet, I couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for her. She had had a hell of a day.
And I had a job to do. I walked over to the body and leaned across the pool of blood to feel the man’s skin above his wrist; his muscles were in the beginning stages of rigor. The blood was drying in shiny layers on the tile and his skin temp was a couple degrees below normal. He’d been dead a while. “Did you know the dead man?” I asked, going for shock value.
She flinched at the word “dead” and shook her head. That meant nothing. I’d seen murderers cry at will and still pass a polygraph. “Did you kill him?” Bad cop.
“No!” She grabbed my arm, eyes wide. “No, I found him like that.” One hand went to her head and the other pointed toward the door. “When I drove up out front to check their mailbox, I saw the door ajar. I figured the wind blew it open.”
�
��What made you walk in? Didn’t you figure that would be dangerous?”
She jerked her head back like a chicken, glaring at me. “I watch out for my customers. Besides, I heard what sounded like someone walk-working in the other room, and I thought it was the maintenance man. I-I was just going to check, then I smelled... ” She pointed toward the body in the hallway and angled her head to peer around me.
“Why didn’t you call 911?”
“I was going to but...” She licked her lips and looked down at her twisting fingers.
“Go on,” I coached, wondering how much of what followed would be the truth.
“I heard a noise in the other room, a door squeaking,” she squinted as she thought about it, “a click…and I shouted—”
She winced, looking up, “Where did you put my vase?”
“It’s in my cruiser.”
“Is it locked?” she asked urgently.
“Of course.” I thought maybe she intended to steal it, but she looked relieved. “You shouted what?”
“I… mighta...um, ‘Police?’”
“What?” I gaped at her. “Are you nuts?”
She winced and shrugged. “It just...you know how they tell you on those cop shows that if you just yell or fight or scream bloody murder—” She looked at the body on the floor, “Sorry—that the perpetrator will run, out of fear of being caught?”
“Perpetrator...” I shook my head. “Here’s the problem with that. Those are TV shows, fiction. This isn’t a cozy TV mystery and you’re not a nosy sleuth.” I hoped. She was definitely nosy. “What if the perpetrator had decided to attack instead of run?”
“I had a grgnrbwg...” her voice trailed off as she ducked her head.
“What?”
“A…golf club.” She arched a brow. “A Greg Norman wedge.”
I looked over at the dead man on the floor as a siren sounded outside. “The club you used on the locker?”
She nodded.
“I heard about you and a certain golf club,” I said.
“Not you, too. Does everybody add two plus two and get… nine?” I watched, holding back a laugh, as she slowly added in her head. She huffed a breath and plopped her chin on her palm.
“The truth will come out eventually.” I scratched my head. “All right, Ms. Pomeroy, this is what I’m going to do.”
“I’m going to give you a while to think about what you’re not telling me and I’ll be back.” I guided her head down, through the door, installing her in the back seat of my cruiser as if I were taking her to jail. I didn’t know what I was going to do yet. Whoever had killed the man in the clubhouse would have had blood spatter all over him, and Tempest Pomeroy was clean except for that single step in the blood pool. I wanted to make her squirm for a bit and see if she ‘remembered’ anything. After all, I did catch her in the act of damaging private property. In the meantime, I needed to secure the crime scene and take some pictures.
“But—”
I started to shut the door, then remembered, “Where’s your cellphone?”
“In my truck, why?”
“Evidence.”
“Ooooh, what are you talking about? I told you, I didn’t kill that man. Let me out. I need River’s vase back. I have to find my brother. And I…” as if it were an afterthought, “… have a route to finish.”
She shook her head from side to side, setting an aqua colored curl free of the scrunchie. “Today of all days.”
“Don’t sweat it. I’ll get a deputy to lock up your packages and make sure the mail center gets someone to finish your route—”
“Ugh, that’ll go over real well.” Sobriety had returned, and so had her temper.
“Quit working yourself up into such a lather and let me do my job.” I shrugged out of my jacket and tossed it on her lap. “Here. Wouldn’t want you to get cold.” I closed the door firmly in her pretty, agitated face.
As I walked toward the clubhouse, I heard her beating on the window, and the muffled sound of my name.
Chapter 11
I was finally, chillingly sure that my brother was in trouble.
* * *
Tempe
I shivered as I thought about the events of the last—I looked at my watch—fifty-five minutes! It seemed like hours since I’d driven up in front of the clubhouse. Lang had handed me his jacket before locking me in the prisoner section of his car—the prisoner section! I watched him march up the walkway, surveying the area around the building. The masculine scent wafting up from the warmth of his jacket triggered the memory of the rotted fish smell coming off the variant inside the clubhouse.
What was he? I’d have to ask Montana or Aurora or, as a last resort, Dylan. My mind was finally starting to operate normally again.
I wasn’t under arrest, just locked in!
I smiled.
Peering through the grate, I looked for River’s amphora. It was lying on its side in a clear bag on the front floorboard. For the first time I noticed the other seal was gone. No self-respecting Djinn would be caught without a back door. River’s emergency exit was through the short spout. Had it been there when I pulled it from the locker? Everything had happened so fast.
I closed my eyes trying to remember exactly how it looked when I’d taken it off the top shelf. I had only sensed a remnant of River’s essence. But if the lid was gone, where was it? More importantly, where was River’s force? And how long could River last with his life source suspended out there somewhere in limbo?
I was finally, chillingly sure that my brother was in trouble. I slapped my palm against my forehead, twice. Stupid. Slap. Stupid.
Another cruiser drove up and a deputy got out. He looked my way briefly then walked toward the clubhouse. The sheriff had already gone inside. When the deputy walked through the door, I decided on a plan. I couldn’t let them take my cell phone. It was the only way my brother could get in touch with me. And right now, River was my main priority. It was about time,I chided myself. I mean, I’m sorry about the man in the clubhouse, but I didn’t kill him. And I was sure there would be no evidence pointing to me, so I closed my eyes and went to work.
Jack
I checked the front door. There was no evidence of forced entry. Who had tripped the silent alarm—the victim or Pomeroy? What set it off? According to her version, the alarm had been going when she arrived. That coincided with dispatch receiving notice of it from the monitoring agency.
I’d called the lab techs after putting the mail lady in my vehicle. I wanted to get a look around before they started tearing into the scene. I bent down to study the victim’s proximity to the counters and locker room. He reeked for sure.
While I waited for the coroner and my deputy, I shot a few pictures.
He looked African-American, though his face was mangled and bloody from the force of what looked to be repeated blows to his head. Judging by the grey in his hair, the beard and the fleshy skin beneath his neck, I figured he was in his late fifties, early sixties.
Why wasn’t he wearing clothes? And where were they? I searched the other rooms and found no discarded clothing in the men’s room or behind any of the counters.
An upturned bar stool and a spread of gold plastic tees indicated a short struggle. I did a 360 looking for a weapon but nothing else clicked. I’d found Tempe in the locker room so I stepped over the victim and slowly worked my way to the threshold. There was a spray of blood on the wall and door, which suggested it had been closed when the man was struck. But lying just inside the door to the gym on the right was a wedge.
“Greg Norman, I presume.” I inspected it for trace material but didn’t see any with the naked eye. I walked over to the locker and used my gloved finger on the corner of the door to swing it open. The inside was empty except for a package of golf balls. Until I knew what I was looking for, I’d just sweep the locker and bag the contents. I opened the door to the outside and looked for footprints. The grass was crushed near the sidewalk. I marked one area for pictures an
d saw more apparent indentations in the grass.
I turned as Deputy Basile came through the door. “Sir? The lab techs will be here any minute.”
“Fine. I need you to cordon off the clubhouse and grounds. You might as well call your wife and tell her you won’t be home tonight. We have to set up a grid and search outside before the rain gets worse or curiosity seekers mess up our crime scene.”
Basile vacillated.
“What are you waiting for?”
“Yes, sir. Uh, sir, what’s that smell?”
“Very observant, Basile. I intend to find out.”
He nodded. I thought about Pomeroy. “First, though, I need you to go outside to that mail truck. Put any packages from the bed into the front seat, lock it up; bring me the cell phone and keys. Oh, and check on the woman in the back seat of my cruiser.”
“Yes, sir.”
I reached for a slide from my pack and tried not to inhale. The odor emanating from the victim was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. Separating each of the man’s stiff fingers, I pressed them to the slides and carefully stored them in my evidence case. I moved to the cart path on the side of the building.
“Uh, boss.” Basile again, from the doorway.
“Yes, Basile.” I was wrapping a piece of pink flagging on the end of a holly bush when I realized he was waiting for me to look up. Impatiently I asked, “What, Basile?”
“I didn’t see a mail truck. And there ain’t nobody in your car.”
“Shit!”
The deputy and I loped around the building to the parking lot. Sure enough, Tempe Pomeroy and her truck were gone.