Death at Peony House (The Invisible Entente Book 2)

by Krista Walsh

  She found it very interesting that the suggestion of medical malpractice had done nothing but spark a note of irritation, while the mention of those dead bodies had pushed him over the edge.

  You’re hiding something all right, Chuck, she thought. Hide in your office for now, but I’m going to find you out.

  10

  The next morning, Daphne drove to the Chronicle with her mind buzzing with ideas. She’d spent the evening with her mother and grandmother talking about what she’d learned from Mary Ruth and Laura, as well as Charles’s continued strong reaction to the mention of the bodies.

  “It could just mean that he doesn’t like the thought of people dying for no reason,” her grandmother, Evelyn, had suggested. “Or he’s afraid of getting sued.”

  Daphne nodded. “It could be, and after the first time, I thought that might be the case, but he threw a grown man’s temper tantrum in front of his assistant. If it was just discomfort, I think that’s a bit of an overreaction, don’t you?”

  Cheryl spooned a second helping of mashed potatoes onto Daphne’s plate. “So what do you plan to do next?”

  “I want to try to get more of the ghosts to speak with me,” she replied, pouring gravy over her vegetables. “Mary Ruth was a great start, but she didn’t see much. Maybe one of the others did? What I would really love to do is narrow in on Charles’s magic, but I have no idea where I would begin my search.”

  “We might be able to help you with that,” said Evelyn. She pierced a spear of lettuce, her soft, papery brow knitting together. She swept a wrinkled hand through her shoulder-length white hair as she thought things through. “You mentioned his energy was red?”

  Daphne nodded. “Bright red. Even more so the second time I met him than the first.”

  Evelyn and Cheryl exchanged a glance, and Cheryl gave a resigned shrug. “I have enough issues with my daughter getting involved with ghosts, but I guess we’ll see what we can find in the books. Red usually hints at emotional magic — the stronger the emotions, the greater the power — but we might be able to get more specific.”

  Daphne had gone to bed satisfied that she was getting closer to the truth, and had woken up raring to go.

  She pulled into the parking lot of the Chronicle and was certain the gods were smiling on her when she found a parking spot.

  She grabbed her purse and rooted through it for her pass as she started toward the door. In her periphery, she noticed a man leaning against the wall and took a few steps to the side to avoid bumping into him.

  She found her pass at the bottom of her bag tangled up with a handful of crumpled receipts, and as she reached for the door handle, the man pushed away from the wall, crowding her.

  Daphne’s magic jumped awake and filled her veins, and she stepped back, her heart pounding in her chest.

  She heaved out a breath and her magic evaporated when she recognized the auburn hair and bright hazel eyes of Detective Avery. A sharp ache throbbed behind her left eye as her magic struggled to rise and she pressed it down. Her heart rate picked up again, though, when she saw the thundercloud hanging over Hunter’s head.

  “Good morning, Detective,” she said.

  “Miss Heartstone. May I have a word with you?”

  His words were careful and strained, and Daphne swallowed hard. She chewed on her bottom lip as she followed him to the alley beside the building, her hands clenching and unclenching and her stomach doing somersaults. A few years ago, an invitation into the alley might have meant some fun before work started, but she doubted this encounter would be so satisfying.

  “What can I help you with this fine morning?” she asked, working to keep the nerves out of her voice.

  Her fingers were crossed that he’d come to apologize for his brusqueness the other night. Maybe he’d say that he’d forgiven her for all of the crap she’d put him through and ask if she would like to go to dinner to laugh about the good old days and what a wild-child journalist she’d been.

  Her wishes went unanswered.

  “Did I or did I not ask you to step away from the Peony House case?” he asked, his voice tense, as though he were holding back from releasing the full tempest of his anger.

  Daphne cleared her throat. “You did.”

  He locked gazes with her, his irises more brown than green that morning — something she noticed happened when he was upset. “And you agreed?”

  She nodded.

  “Then please tell me that the phone call my station received yesterday afternoon from Charles Ancowitz placing a complaint against you was a misunderstanding.”

  She released her breath and bowed her head. Lying would be useless, and she didn’t want to dig a deeper hole with him.

  “Dammit, Daphne,” he snarled, and his sharpness made her jump.

  She still couldn’t look at him. She’d known he wouldn’t be happy when he found out, so his reaction was far from surprising, but she regretted he’d found out so soon.

  “I asked you to stay out of it,” he said. “All I needed was for you to pass off the story, and when I saw Quinn’s name on the byline I thought for once you’d actually listened. How goddamned naive am I? Because, as always, the only person you’re looking out for is yourself.”

  “That’s not fair,” she said. Her magic rose with her anger, and she dragged it back down. It had been far too quick to respond over the last couple of days, and her inability to use it set her blood burning. “I passed the story off, but I still need to work to keep my job. I know your life would be a whole lot easier if I upped and changed careers, but this is what I do. This is who I am. And I think I’ve done a good job accommodating you.”

  “Accommodating?” he said in disbelief. He shoved his hands through his hair. “The list of charges I could bring up against you is staggering, Daphne. The only reason I haven’t — hell, I don’t even know why I haven’t. But you’re crossing a line.”

  “How?” she shot back.

  “You’re badgering a man who has no bearing on this case!” Hunter exclaimed. He threw up his hands. “Unless you think Charles Ancowitz, a man whose only connection to the murder is that he owns the abandoned building where it happened, was the one to kill him. What do you think? He caught the kid trespassing and instead of calling the police, he killed him?”

  Daphne pressed her lips together, not wanting to admit that she was considering that very thing.

  “Exactly,” Hunter said, taking her silence as embarrassment. “So what are you doing?”

  “I’m looking at it from a different angle,” she said.

  If he was confronting her anyway, she wanted to be as honest as she could be without mentioning the supernatural element. She doubted he’d believe her if she told him she’d been attacked by a burnt corpse and that a ghost was going to help her get to the bottom of her story.

  “I started looking into the history of Peony House and discovered another murder from a hundred years ago that was exactly the same as this one. No known cause of death and mouth glued shut — unless you’ve found answers to either of those questions yet?”

  The lines around Hunter’s mouth turned white at the mention of the glued mouth, and Daphne kicked herself. He’d already told her he hadn’t seen what she’d seen, and nothing in the media had hinted at any such grim details.

  And now it sounds like I’m fishing. Shut up, Daphne.

  She still wished he’d answer. If the medical examiner had found anything at all, it might help her narrow down what sort of power she was dealing with.

  “How did you find out about this other murder?” he asked.

  Mary Ruth’s face flashed in front of Daphne’s eyes. She looked away from Hunter, dreading the increased anger she suspected was about to come over him. “Research.”

  Sure enough, a low growl came from the back of his throat.

  “There was an article,” she rushed to add. “Mary Ruth Taylor. She was a guest of the Ancowitz family and just didn’t wake up one day.”

 
“So what are you suggesting?” he asked, and she picked up a slight trace of curiosity along his frustration. “That the two murders are connected? That we’re dealing with a copycat?”

  “Maybe,” she said, and opened her arms wide. “I’m just telling you what I know. I can’t know if there’s a connection because I’ve kept my nose out of Jack’s case. Just like you asked me to.”

  Hunter’s eyes widened, and Daphne’s mouth went dry. She’d made a mistake.

  “How do you know our victim’s name, Miss Heartstone?” he asked, and his voice had gone calm again. Dangerously so. “He’s a minor. That information wasn’t given to the press.”

  She brought her fist down on the wall behind her. “I went back to the hospital the night after the murder and bumped into a friend of his. All I know is that his name is Emmett.”

  Hunter’s mouth dropped open. “You found Emmett Keddy? We’ve been searching for him for days.”

  Daphne winced and tried to dig herself out of the hole she’d made for herself. “If it means anything, he tells me he wasn’t there the night of the murder.”

  “I’d rather hear that from him, thanks. Where can I find him?”

  “I think he lives on the streets, but I dropped him off at the corner of Kent and Dursley. He told me he saw Charles Ancowitz at the hospital a week before the murder, but that he hadn’t been back since.”

  Hunter pressed his lips together, his gaze jumping around the alley. She could almost see his thoughts buzzing about how to react. Her heart pattered against her ribs, and she dug her nails into her palms to keep from imagining any worst-case scenarios.

  Finally, he stepped away from her. “Back off, Daphne. I mean it when I say I don’t want your name anywhere near this. You tell me you’re trying to change and make up for what you’ve done, so prove it to me. The more you poke around, the more you risk messing up our case, and if it happens again, my patience with you is at the end of its rope. Is that clear?”

  He started walking away, and then stopped and came back. “And if I get one more call from Charles Ancowitz about you, I’ll have you up on harassment. I’m serious. I’m done.”

  Hunter stormed off, and Daphne sagged against the wall. She brought her fist against her forehead and held back a scream of frustration.

  One step forward, three steps back with him, she thought. The worst part was that she couldn’t listen to him. Not when she’d come so far and the truth of the story was so close.

  ***

  For the rest of the day, Daphne couldn’t let go of her conversation with Hunter. She wished she could have told him everything without sounding like she needed to be committed for a psychological evaluation. If only there had been no supernatural element to Jack’s death, she could have followed his orders and not butted heads with him again.

  But wishes were useless when reality was taking her down another path, and she guessed she’d be butting heads with Hunter more than once before Peony House was free from whatever spell it was under.

  She was unpleasantly surprised to discover how much his continued anger and disappointment hurt her. She missed his smile — the one that had warmed her from the inside out back when he’d ask her for drinks or dinner and as they enjoyed many an afternoon in his cramped bachelor apartment. The only person she could blame for the lost chance was herself, and the reminder of how badly she had messed things up made her feel three inches tall.

  Gerry left her alone when she came in, and she spent the rest of the day following up on leads for the other stories she’d allowed to lapse. Between phone calls, she picked at a rough draft of Jack’s story, jotting down everything she guessed the police would make public later. Because Hunter and Meg would solve the case. Daphne felt it in her gut. And she would help any way she could, even if Hunter hated her for it.

  After four hours of running through emails and sending off a few shorter articles so she could keep her job until the high profile story was due on Gerry’s desk, she left the office and headed home.

  She pulled the car into the driveway and was about to haul her exhausted body out of the driver’s seat when she realized something about the house was off.

  The curtains to her mother’s dining room were closed, which never happened. She glanced up to her apartment on the second floor, but the energy of her own space was untouched.

  Against her better judgment, the nagging voice in the back of her head telling her she’d drawn too much lately, she summoned her magic and allowed it to pour through her limbs. Her skin tingled with the power, and she let it simmer as she stepped out of the car.

  She kept her steps slow on her way to the front door, casting her mind toward the house. Four separate energies reached her — three human, two with magic and one not, and one feline. Her magic ebbed at the lessened threat, but her senses remained heightened as she opened the front door and approached her mother and grandmother’s apartment.

  Daphne focused on her breathing to keep her magic and her heartbeat steady and stretched out her hands. A tiny tornado formed above her palms, sucking in air from the hallway. She tried to grab some dirt from the floor, but her mother never left enough behind to be useful for more than temporarily blinding an assailant. She readied herself for a quick change of magic in case of a fight.

  The door to the apartment was unlocked, and the struggle to keep her heartbeat slow took more effort. Her mother didn’t like leaving the door unlocked, even when Daphne was home. The latch was old and the shifting house tended to swing the door open.

  “Mom?” she called out, and when she heard no answer, she stepped into the apartment.

  Blood rushed in her ears, blocking her attempts to make out the sounds of someone in trouble. The living room was empty, as was the sunroom at the back of the house. Then voices floated toward her from the kitchen. A shriek, a dish breaking.

  Daphne’s heart broke free of its restraints and jumped into her throat. She ran through the living room, jumped over an ottoman, and rushed onto the white-and-blue tiles of the kitchen floor. Magic surged through her, and the whirlwind turned on its side, ready to be launched at the first person to come at her.

  But she skidded to a halt when the next sound to reach her ears was laughter.

  “Oh gods, what a mess. Mother, put down the rag, I’ll — Daphne, what on earth are you doing?”

  Cheryl propped her fists on her hips, a dishrag hanging down from one side.

  “Put your magic away and watch your step. I don’t want you cutting yourself.”

  Daphne stood blinking in the doorway and looked around the room in wonder. Her grandmother sat at the table with her large green mixing bowl in front of her. A spoon moved on its own to whip the contents. Cheryl dropped to her knees to clean up one of the blue dinner plates — likely knocked over by Benji, who had taken up half of the counter space and patiently awaited whatever was in the stove.

  Sitting across from her grandmother was Emmett. A plate of cheesy biscuits sat in front of him, and he wore a wide grin.

  “What’s gotten you all in a tizzy?” Cheryl asked.

  “Your curtains are closed,” Daphne replied, gesturing to the living room.

  Cheryl waved a hand in dismissal. “I was giving them an airing out when Emmett came to the door. I just forgot to open them again.”

  Daphne turned to face Emmett.

  “I wondered when you’d get home,” he said around crumbs.

  Daphne blinked. And stared. And blinked again.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “Daphne, don’t be rude,” her mother scolded, whipping the towel at Daphne’s leg in playful reprimand. “I’ve invited Emmett to join us for dinner.”

  “The young man needs some fattening up,” Evelyn agreed. She looked at Daphne over the plastic purple frames of her glasses. The pink-and-purple beaded chain that kept her glasses around her neck matched her purple shawl and pink housedress. Shocking purple socks stuck out from beneath the hem. “And I’ll bet yo
u haven’t eaten anything today except bread and coffee. You’re wasting away.”

  “I’ve been busy,” Daphne said. “Emmett, could I talk to you outside for a minute?”

  “Come on, I’m eating,” he said. The smile never left his face.

  Daphne raised an eyebrow and summoned her magic once more into her palm, keeping her hand hidden by her side so her mother and grandmother wouldn’t see the golden glow.

  His cheeks paled a couple of shades, and he nodded. “All right.”

  He grabbed another biscuit on his way out of the room, and Daphne grabbed his arm, dragging him out of the apartment into the hallway.

  “How did you know where I live?” she demanded.

  Emmett cleared his throat and stared at his shoe, scuffing his toe on the hardwood flooring. With his lips pressed together, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a card. Daphne snatched it and sputtered.

  “This is my driver’s license.”

  “Kind of, yeah.”

  “But —”

  “I grabbed it out of your purse at the coffee shop. I didn’t plan to use it or anything — obviously,” he gestured to the photo, then to his face, “but I figured it might be good to know how to reach you if I had anything else to tell you.”

  “And?” she asked. She forced herself to focus on the priority of getting his cooperation and to ignore her desire to lash out at him for letting her drive without a license for two days. She was in enough trouble with Hunter as it was.

  Emmett shrugged. “Nothing much, just that a couple of weeks ago, one of the last times I was there, I was woken up by some guy whistling through the window in the middle of the night. I didn’t want to get caught so I ducked into one of the rooms and didn’t see who it was. I doubt it was the guy in the suit. Just figured it might be important.”

  Daphne chewed on her cheek and considered his information. It could have been a neighbor walking his dog for all she knew, but she made a note to ask Mary Ruth.