by Raven Snow
“Yeah?” said Justin, looking dubiously out of his cracked open front door before they had even knocked.
Rowen put on her best smile. “Hi, we’re from the Lainswich Inquirer. I’m Rowen Greensmith, and this is my cousin−”
“Margo?” Justin interrupted, gaping at Margo. “Oh, wow. How long has it been? You look amazing!”
Margo smiled. She couldn’t help it. She had a weakness for compliments. “Thank you. You too. You look… good.”
Justin looked down at his own stained t-shirt and frowned. “Sorry. Been cleaning for the last two days straight. Then I found out about the murder… Haven’t really had a chance to do laundry.”
“That’s why we’re here, actually,” said Rowen, finding an opening in the conversation and taking it. “The murder and the party. Have the police questioned you?”
“Sort of,” said Justin with a shrug.
“Sort of?” Rowen repeated.
“I mean, Lindsay was here that night.” Justin’s voice cracked a little when he said that. Rowen wasn’t sure if he had been a friend or if he just didn’t deal with the reality of murder well. Either seemed like a fair response. “When I found out what happened, I called the cops. I gave them a statement. They gave me one interview. They haven’t called me down for another one yet.”
“Would you mind talking to us?” asked Margo, giving Justin a warm smile. Now that she knew he wasn’t still sore over whatever had happened during their breakup, she was really getting into it.
Justin raised an eyebrow at her. Her charms didn’t really extend all that far. “I don’t think I can,” he said. “I think that might be against the law or something.”
“How many people were at the party?” asked Rowen. “Can you tell us that?”
Justin motioned to his yard. “Quite a few, obviously. I throw pretty legendary parties.”
Margo nodded. “He does,” she told Rowen. Maybe that was why she had dated the guy in high school.
“Can you give us any of their names?” Rowen asked, following up on that. “Maybe make a list of them or something?”
“I don’t know.” Justin looked uncomfortable with that— which was understandable. Most people weren’t going to readily give the local outcasts and journalists a list out of the goodness of their heart. That seemed risky.
“Just one name?” Rowen prompted, desperate for anything. She didn’t want their trip here to be a total wash.
“Well…” Justin trailed off as if considering. “I guess it doesn’t matter if I tell you Ben was there. The guy who works for the police? I think you dated him for a while, Rowen. He was here. That’s gotta be public record, right? Conflict of interests or something.”
Rowen and Margo exchanged looks. That was some interesting information, indeed. “That’s helpful,” said Rowen. “Thanks.”
“That all?” asked Justin.
Rowen had another question on her mind. She considered asking Margo to go to the car before she asked. She didn’t want anyone getting the wrong idea. Margo had a tendency to gossip. Rowen asked with her there anyway. “Was a business man there?” she asked. “Nice car, named David.”
Margo gave Rowen a startled look when she asked that question. She didn’t say anything, though. She waited for Justin to answer.
It took Justin just a moment to place the description. “Oh, yeah!” He nodded. “Yeah, he was there, I think.” He gave a low whistle. “Man, that guy sure knew how to party.”
“Can you tell me if he was with Lindsay at all?” asked Rowen.
Justin’s expression grew guarded again. He looked from Rowen to Margo then back again. “I’m really not sure I should be talking about this.”
“That’s fine,” Rowen said, quickly. His lack of an answer had already spoken volumes, anyway. It sounded like David was someone who could be a suspect. Between that and what the ghost had said… This was just getting more and more complicated by the moment. “I appreciate your help.”
Rowen and Margo headed back to the car with a few new pieces of information. Rowen still wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with them. “Don’t tell Eric about the David thing,” she said. That she was sure of, at least. “Not yet, anyway.”
“Are you sure?” asked Margo. “That seems like something he should hear about.”
Rowen knew Margo was right. Still, she couldn’t see herself confronting Eric on this. Surely, it would sort itself out, and she wouldn’t have to. “I’ll tell him,” she said. “Just… let’s wait until we have more to go on.”
“If you say so,” Margo said, in a way that implied she was still skeptical, but wasn’t going to argue the matter. “Where to now?”
“Back to the police station,” said Rowen, putting the car into gear. “We have another lead to go on, remember? We should ask Ben what he remembers about that night.”
Margo smirked. “Just visiting all the ex-boyfriends today, aren’t we?”
Chapter Eight
Eric called Rowen on her cell just when she was parking outside of the police station. She considered telling him about the David thing then, but ruled it out quickly. It still seemed better to wait. You didn’t just go around accusing your boyfriend’s family of murder. That seemed like a sure fire way to kill a relationship.
“Hey, honey,” Rowen said, answering the phone.
“Honey?” Eric chuckled. “All right. I can roll with that pet name. What am I supposed to call you?”
“I’m partial to ‘your majesty.’ ”
“We’ll stick with ‘Rowen.’ ” Eric got on to the reason he had called. “I’m sorry again about David.”
“It’s all right,” Rowen said with a sigh— hoping it really was all right in the long run. “I might have overreacted. I mean, he did sort of complicate things needlessly, but he didn’t know that’s what he was doing. I know some of the stuff our family does can be hard to swallow.”
“Still,” said Eric, “he didn’t have to be rude.”
Rowen would give him that. “We just won’t involve him in further attempted ghost communications.”
“Are you still trying?” asked Eric. “Can you just… call ghosts back?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Last time, we had a couple of ghosts that didn’t want to leave us alone,” Eric reminded her, as if she could forget.
“Not all ghosts work the same.”
“That just sounds like you don’t understand it.”
“I don’t really,” Rowen admitted. “But we have Rose, Willow, and Peony back at the office trying to contact her again every couple of hours. Hopefully, that produces something useful.”
“Back at the office?” Eric repeated. “Where are you at?”
“Margo and I went out to question that Justin guy Lindsay mentioned,” said Rowen.
“What?” Eric sounded angrier about that than Rowen had expected. She hadn’t anticipated any anger at all. “Why didn’t you wait for me to come back? I could have gone with you!”
“We were fine,” Rowen assured him.
Eric didn’t seem so convinced by that. “What if he’d turned out to be the murderer?”
“Then I imagine he’s very relieved he’s not in custody right now and is actively getting away with murder.” Rowen wasn’t used to someone fretting over her whereabouts like this. It was equal parts touching and annoying. “We’re all right. He didn’t seem very murdery.”
Eric gave a groan. “That’s not the point.”
“Well, we’re at the police station now,” Rowen told him, hoping that might settle the matter. “I don’t think anyone is going to murder us here.”
That, at least, got Eric’s attention. “Why are you at the police station?”
“We have some more questions for Ben. I’ll fill you in on the details tonight.” Rowen was already looking forward to seeing him tonight. She hated that he was in town, and she was missing being with him. She would much rather he was with her right now instead of Margo. Not that she
didn’t love Margo.
Margo sighed noisily. “Are we going to go in or not?”
“I won’t keep you,” Eric said, no doubt hearing her. “Be careful. Let me know if you go investigate anymore murderers, all right?”
“Will do.” Rowen wasn’t sure she necessarily would. She’d try to warn him first if she went anywhere else, though. “What are you up to?”
“I guess I’m going to keep an eye on David.” Eric didn’t sound pleased about that. “Our parents are off with your aunts, which sort of worries me to be honest. I don’t really want my brother alone in your house in the meantime. I don’t know what bad habits he’s formed for himself, but I’m not going to have him wandering off or raiding your family’s liquor cabinet or anything.”
“I’ll try to be home soon.” Rowen said her goodbyes and hung up the phone. Finally, she headed inside with a very impatient Margo.
The police station was about as dead as it had been that morning. Rowen was beginning to think that they were dangerously understaffed. That might make a good headline in the future. Right now, she had bigger problems.
“I’m here to speak with Ben,” Rowen told the receptionist. “Tell him it’s Rowen.”
The receptionist gave Rowen a blank look. “I know who you are.” She picked up her phone and dialed some numbers. “Rowen Greensmith is here to talk with Ben.” She listened for a bit, then hung up. “Yeah, he’s busy.”
Rowen hadn’t expected that answer. She looked past the reception desk, trying to see if she could spot him. She didn’t. “Is he here?”
“He’s busy,” said the receptionist, leaving it there and leaving absolutely zero room for argument.
Normally, Rowen might just storm into the back and see if she could find him herself. She wasn’t going to break the rules in a police station, though. “Fine,” she said instead, heading out.
“Fine?” Margo repeated skeptically once they were outside. “Is this really fine? It sounds to me like we wasted a drive.”
“I’m going to give him a call,” Rowen said, pulling out her phone as they headed back to the car.
“You’re going to call him?” Margo laughed. “You mean that was an option this entire time? Why didn’t we start with that?”
“This is the sort of thing you need to surprise a person with,” Rowen told Margo, certain of herself on this. “You want to surprise them and see their reaction. Don’t give people time to prepare a lie for you.” She dialed. “We’re going to have to settle for the next best thing, though.”
“Rowen?” Ben answered. “What’d you find?”
Rowen was flattered that he immediately assumed she had some valuable information for him. It was a nice change from him manipulating her or being annoyed by her very presence. “I’m actually sitting outside the police station right now,” she said, hoping that would be news to him. “I came in to see you, but they said you were busy.”
Ben was silent for a while. Evidently, this was news to him. “I have a feeling the Chief doesn’t want you snooping around anymore. He’s not thrilled I’m trying to use you as a consultant.”
Rowen wasn’t at all surprised by that. It probably came off a bit like the police were letting a psychic help them solve the murder. The Greensmith’s helping the police was unlikely to be very popular, given the family’s reputation in Lainswich. “I’d still like to talk. Do you think we can meet up?”
Ben sighed. He sounded torn. “I guess we can meet over dinner. How’s tonight sound? Tony’s at eight?”
“I’ll be there,” Rowen assured him. She hung up.
“I hate Tony’s,” Margo complained.
Rowen was just about done spending quality time with Margo for a while. “You don’t have to go.”
“Good.” Margo frowned, looking torn. “Who’s going to go with you, though? I mean, that’s what this is about, right? You’re afraid he might have had something to do with the murder? You can’t just go meet up with him on your own.”
“It’ll be fine.” Rowen already had a plan. “Eric will come with me.”
Chapter Nine
Eric was only too happy to get out of the house. His parents had come home. He and Rowen’s aunts were getting along fabulously. That might have sounded wonderful in theory but, in reality, it was horrifying. It was like his parents had been roped into some sort of hippie retreat and were finally getting into it. They may not necessarily believe in spells and witchcraft, but they’d spent the entire afternoon helping to set up a spell for wealth. If nothing else, this was all very new and fun for them.
That also meant they were there to keep an eye on David. Rowen still didn’t want him unsupervised, but she couldn’t exactly take him along to question Ben. Fortunately, staying with his parents in the Greensmith household seemed to be some kind of personal hell for him.
“Normally, I’d feel bad just abandoning him like this,” Eric said, as they drove away. “He’s been such a jerk lately, though. He absolutely deserves it.”
Rowen parked outside of Tony’s fifteen before eight. It was a popular little greasy spoon downtown. Rowen didn’t eat there often, but she knew it was always fairly large and crowded— as far as “crowded” went for Lainswich. They could have a conversation there without having to worry about people being able to overhear them.
The restaurant was bustling when they went in. A few people glanced in her direction. There were some whispers. There wasn’t much beyond that, though. Rowen had been there for a while; her return to Lainswich was old news.
Ben hadn’t arrived yet, so she and Eric picked a booth in the back. “So, you used to date this guy?” asked Eric.
After keeping the business about his own brother from him, Rowen had figured she should at least come clean about Ben. “It was a long time ago,” she assured him. “We were kids.” Legally, they had been adults. Rowen wasn’t going to get into semantics, though.
“What happened?” asked Eric, pulling the drink menu from the wall and glancing it over.
“The same thing that happens with every guy who dates a Greensmith girl,” Rowen said with a sigh. “We broke up.”
Eric rolled his eyes. “Obviously. I mean, what happened to cause the breakup?”
“I cursed his mother.” Rowen reached over and grabbed a drink menu for herself. “Oh, this looks good. I probably shouldn’t drink anything alcoholic, huh? It would look unprofessional.”
“You did what?” Eric asked, not distracted by the way she had tried to change the subject. “You cursed his mother?”
Rowen spread her hands in an attempt to look as innocent as she felt in this particular situation. “She accused me of making her hair fall out. She always hated me, though. She was a real witch, and not in the good way.”
“Did you curse her?” Eric asked, raising an eyebrow.
Rowen shrugged. “It didn’t matter if I did or not. She showed up at my front door screaming at me one morning. She never thought I was good enough for her son. She had just been looking for something to hate me over. I got so mad at her, I said I cursed her. Ben said he had to end things between us after that.”
“Did you curse her, though?” Eric pushed.
“Maybe.” Rowen tapped the menu. “I’m going to get a virgin margarita. They just look too good.”
Eric shook his head and sighed. “What is this I keep hearing about you and your family ending things poorly with all the men in your lives?”
“I’m not sure,” Rowen said, being honest. “I mean, I don’t know what causes it. We just have terrible luck with men. They always end up hating us.”
Eric frowned. He reached across the table and took Rowen’s hand into his own. “I could never end up hating you.”
Rowen scoffed. “You say that now.” She was touched, though. She squeezed his hand back. “I really do hope things work out with you. I like you a lot, you know.”
“I love you,” said Eric, drawing her hand to his mouth and kissing the back of it.
Rowen giggled, helplessly. “That too.”
“Sorry for interrupting,” said Ben.
Eric quickly stood and moved around to his girlfriend’s side of the table. “Good to see you again,” he said, which was a blatant lie.
Ben offered him a smile anyway. “So, what’s this all about?”
“Let’s order first.” Rowen ordered her virgin margarita and a hamburger. Everyone else ordered. Ben did so impatiently. “So,” began Rowen, now that their server had left. “I hear Lindsay was at a party the night before she died.”