by Tegan Maher
She waved me off. "Pay me no mind. A lot of ugly's happened in this room over the last year or so, and it sort of took the shine off it for me. It's a shame, really."
Not quite sure what to make of that, I said, "Surely there are many more good memories than bad. Concentrate on those."
"I'm sure you're right," she said as she turned back the way we'd come.
I followed her, casting one last glance around the room. I opened my wolf senses up and took a few deep breaths on my way out, but got nothing but the smell of old books and wood, and a faint hint of smoke from many crackling fires long extinguished. And, of course, Pledge.
No blood, no cheap vampire cologne, not so much as a hint of murder. Except for the owner's poorly concealed anger and contempt.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I CALLED SAM ON MY way back to my place to let him know what I'd discovered. I wasn't sure how to proceed because I was pretty sure no sane judge was going to grant me a search warrant because I had a vision of the victim taking his last face-plant on a floor similar to Tara's.
Nor did she strike me as the type to wear lace-up boots, but that didn't mean anything. I owned a pair of four-inch stilettos that had been gathering dust in the back of my closet since the lone time I'd worn them a few years back. Should the need for them arise, though, I could pull them out.
It sucked that all I had was a glimpse of the boots—no idea as to the size or even the sex of the wearer. As a shifter, she was probably strong enough to lift him if she had to, though it would have been a chore. She had motive and no alibi, so even though I liked her and felt sorry for her, she was a viable suspect.
"So if she did it, why dump him out behind the Hook? Why not just dump him in a ditch or bury him on all that property back behind her house?" Sam asked.
Valid question. "I don't know. Maybe she didn't want him anywhere near her? Or maybe she wanted to throw us off her trail. After all, we're questioning it, so it would be a solid plan."
"I guess," he said, doubt lacing his voice, "but it doesn't sit right with me."
I sighed. "Me either, but so far, nothing about this whole case does. I mean, we have a vampire, who by all rights, should have never been so easy to kill. And we have two different women and at least one man—probably more—that wanted him dead."
"Yeah," he said, his voice weary. "This time is the opposite of the rogue situation. Then we had nobody. Now we have a variety to choose from. And add another to the list. Vanderveer took Dennis Hooper for all he was worth and then some night before last."
Dennis was a quiet guy who worked in the maintenance department and Castle's Bluff High.
"He couldn't have gotten him for much," I said. "He doesn't make much more than minimum wage and he has a wife and a couple kids. She's a teacher, so it's not like they're rollin' in the dough."
"Exactly," Sam said. "One of the guys who was there that night said Dennis had a little too much to drink and was runnin' on liquid courage. When he lost everything he had in his pocket—three hundred and forty bucks—he threw in his grandpappy's watch."
"Oh, no," I groaned. "Please tell me this doesn't end the way I think it does."
"Yup. He lost it. Though in Vanderveer's defense, he told Dennis to get out of the game several times, according to a couple different accounts. Dennis insisted to the point of causing a scene, and when he lost the hand, they said the air went out of him and he left."
"So not only did he lose what was probably bill money, he lost one of his most valuable possessions."
"You got it. I don't know how important that is, because Vanderveer followed him outside. The general consensus is that he tried to give the watch back, but Dennis wouldn't take it."
I shook my head as I turned into my driveway. "Can't eat pride."
"No,” Sam said, "but you can't sooth it with charity, either. Fair’s fair."
Truer words.
Sean beeped in as I shut off the Jeep. With a wave of my hand, I disabled my magical Bluetooth and snatched my phone out of the cup holder. "Sam, lemme call you back after I go talk to Clifford."
"Okay, kiddo. Be careful."
“Will do.” I switched to the other line. "Hey, Sean."
"Hello, Cori. Any new developments on your end?"
"A few," I said, trying to decide whether to tell him about Tara Mackey's floor or not. He'd likely hear about it anyway. Somehow, he seemed to know everything that went on. Except who murdered his friend. "Anything on your end?"
"Not much, no. He had a falling-out with an old lover, but that was several weeks ago. She's in London, so unless she flew over, killed him, then flew back in the space of a couple hours, then she's out."
Oh, the number of bat jokes I could have made.
I'd forgotten he was a mind reader and was so good at it he could do it from a distance as long as there was a connection.
"Really Cordelia? Bat references?"
Fun sponge.
"Now, your turn,” he said. “What have you learned?"
I gave him a quick recap of my talks with Carly and Tara as I pushed through my front door and toed off my shoes. Chaos was there as soon as I did, winding around my legs in greeting. Sometimes she was the wise fox familiar, and sometimes she was who she’d always been—the one critter on the planet who was always glad to see me.
"Do you think this Tara woman could have done it?"
"Maybe," I said, flicking my wrist toward the cabinet and sending a glass to the counter as I pulled the tea jug out of the fridge.
"It doesn't feel right, though. I'm going to go talk to Clifford Barker in just a few minutes. I'll keep you posted."
"When are you and Alex coming for another lesson with Charlotte?" he asked.
"Probably tomorrow, though I don't feel right taking the time while we're chasing a murderer."
"There will never be a right time, and with your powers, sooner rather than later is best." It stung a little when he said that, even though I knew he was right. I proved it two seconds later when I waved my hand over some tea that had dribbled onto the counter. The tea disappeared, but so did the counter under it. Chaos tsked, and I told Sean I had to go.
"I'll keep you posted," I said, freaking out a little over the swiss-cheese holes in the counter.
"Do that," he said. "And Cordelia?"
"Yeah?" I asked, scrambling to think of a way to fix it.
"Focus your mind. See the counter in front of you, whole and polished, and it will appear."
How the hell did he do that?
"That was yet another mistake caused by lack of control. I'll see you tomorrow."
I scowled at the phone and wondered why I'd gotten rid of the old wall phone the place had had when I moved in. It would have been handy to take out some frustration by banging it onto the base.
Instead, I focused on making the counter whole again, and failed the other way. The tea came back with it. I growled and grabbed the dishtowel—the one way I knew for certain I wouldn't screw it up.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I CALLED THE PAWNSHOP Clifford owned and asked if he was there. I figured if he was, I could arrange a meeting, and if he wasn't, I'd head over to his place. According to all counts, he always went straight home after work.
As luck would have it, he was gone. The young-sounding girl that answered the phone was chipper, and did her best to sell me something before I could hang up.
For a number of reasons, I decided it would be best to take somebody with me to talk to him. I could handle anything that came up by myself, but maybe not without magic. Since I couldn't just use it—or shift if thing got real when he found out his wife was cheating—then a second pair of hands were in order.
Sam didn't answer his phone when I called, and I didn't feel like waiting around. I didn't want to give him a chance to change and leave the house for an evening out. I called Alex and explained the situation and he said he'd meet me at my place in ten minutes.
I'd brought him on as a special co
nsultant to the police department—a fancy title I'd made up just to explain his presence to the higher-ups during the whole rogue-wolf situation.
That had been a huge mess that I'd needed outside help to fix because the murderer had sort of disappeared. We knew what had happened to him, but it wasn't exactly the type of information I could put in a police report unless I wanted to be stripped of my position and hauled off in a strait jacket.
Between Alex, Sean, me, and my parents—who had as much political clout as Sean did or more—we'd smoothed the mess over, but the point was that Alex officially contracted with the CBSD, complete with badge and fancy red bubble for his car. Though to be fair, Kat had bought him the bubble as a gag gift.
While I waited, I did a little digging on Tara and Robert Mackey. Sam had been dead on with his info. Robert Mackey made his money trading stocks. There were several write-ups on him in various entrepreneur and finance magazines over the years, and they all said the same thing—he was a self-made man who'd started in penny stocks and worked his way to the big leagues.
What we hadn't known, though, was that for the first decade he was climbing the ladder, Tara had worked as a waitress and secretary to pay the bills. That seemed like a double whammy to me; I hoped she got a huge payout from that, but I had a feeling there was no amount of money that would make up for sacrificing the best years of her life so he could run off to the tropics or wherever with his brand-new, boobalicious bimbo.
Recent articles centered around the divorce, and even though the details were kept hush-hush, there was no doubt the amount of money on the table had more than a few zeros. He came off as generous and ashamed in the interviews, expressing his sorrow and regret. It didn't quite make it to his eyes, though, and I kinda wanted to jab him for being such a jerk.
In several of the most recent, post-divorce articles, there were pictures of him and a dippy-looking hottie who could have been his daughter smiling from a yacht, having dinner in Paris, and attending a ten-thousand-dollar-per-plate charity function in Atlanta. Gag. As far as I was concerned, Tara was better off.
The problem was that she seemed to be having a hard time getting past it because he took all their friends with him. I made a mental note to give her a call once this was all over, assuming I didn't have to arrest her for murder.
Alex pulled up right on time, and we decided to take his car since it was already cool. Clifford and Carly Sue lived on the other side of town from Tara, in a neighborhood made up of quaint ranch houses. It was the section of Castle's Bluff where the middle class settled if they wanted to be close to town rather than on a larger property in the country.
I pulled up the address Sam had sent me and gave Alex directions. I didn't need my GPS; if it was in town, I could find it. We pulled up in front of a brick house with decent but plain landscaping. It seemed Carly wasn't the gardening type. Surprise, surprise.
"Are those their cars, or is there company?" Alex asked, motioning to the green pickup and older-model yellow Spider in the drive.
"Theirs," I said. I’d already pulled the DMV info. "This could get interesting. Twenty bucks says she takes one look at us and skedaddles before we get a chance to break the news."
He pinched his lips together and put the car in park. "You're on. From what you’ve said, she seems brassy enough to call you a liar and stick to the story. After all, she's back to the backup goose and she won't give that up without a fight."
I hated it when he made sense like that.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
WE HAD TO KNOCK ON the door twice before Carly answered it, and the expression on her face was smug. I didn't like it already.
"I suppose you're here to talk to my husband." She put extra emphasis on the word, and I narrowed my eyes. Alex looked almost as smug as she did and I elbowed him in the ribs when a voice behind her caught her attention.
"Who is it, Carly?" He sounded a little cranky and her expression faltered a bit before she pulled it back into place.
"It's the cops, just like I told you would happen," she said.
She stood back and motioned for us to come in, and I wondered what had happened to dear old uncle Leo the shyster attorney.
We followed her into a nice but plain living room, obviously staged by somebody looking at a picture in a Southern Living magazine. There wasn't a personal touch in the room except for a stuffed deer head hanging incongruously above an Ethan Allen accent table that held a vase of fake flowers.
A large man who looked like he ate linebackers for lunch was kicked back in a recliner with a Busch Light in one hand and the remote in the other. Baseball replays were flitting across a big screen on the wall in front of him.
"Clifford Barker?" I asked.
He grunted and pointed to the couch sitting at an angle to his recliner. "Yup. Have a seat. Carly, get 'em somethin' to drink."
She looked like she wanted to tell him to do it himself, but caught herself and smiled. "Tea, or Coke?" she asked.
I waved her off, figuring she'd either spit in it or poison it. "We're good. We've just got a couple questions."
Not sure what to do with herself but clearly not wanting to leave the room, she pulled a chair out from under a writing desk that I'm sure had never seen a drop of ink and took a seat.
"So what can I do for you, Sheriff?" Clifford asked. He pointed his head toward Alex. "And who's he?"
I made the introduction, then dove straight in. "You're aware that Charles Vanderveer was murdered last night?"
He nodded. "Yup."
"And you lost a chunk of cash to him the night before."
"Sure did," he said, flipping from one sports station to another without looking at us. "Got me for almost four grand."
Whoa, hold on folks, we had ourselves a talker.
"And how did that make you feel?" I asked.
"Four grand poorer." Another channel flip.
Alex took a deep breath. "Okay, then, were you aware your wife was spending time with him?"
That time, I caught the flexing of the jaw and the slight reddening of his cheeks before he could hide them. He cast a quick, contemptuous glance at her, though I didn't think he meant to. In the span of a blink, though, his face was passive.
"I wasn't at first," he said, his voice neutral. "But I can't say I was surprised when I found out. Plenty of people took her for a test drive before I bought her. But if you think I'd kill somebody for it, you got another thing comin'. Chicks like her are a dime a dozen and she’s on her last good years anyway."
A small gasp came from Carly's direction and when I glanced at her, her cheeks were pink. I sucked in a deep breath and caught the pungent smell of stress sweat coming from him, and fear from her.
I looked at Alex, trying to figure out where to go from there. The conversation was surreal.
He took over. "Yeah, but when you combine the cash and the wife, the odds go up a little. Dude, you found out your wife was sleepin' with the guy that fleeced you for four grand."
For the first time, that got a reaction. "Look," Cliff said, turning in his chair so he was facing us. "Do I know she was messin' around? Yeah, I do now. Am I happy about it? Hell no. The money's gone and the wife's probably not far behind it, but if I've learned anything in this life, it's that shit happens. Money and faithless women come and go. Hell, I might luck out on the second go-round and get a good one."
He shifted his weight back around so he was facing the TV again. "Now get out unless you've got a warrant. My lovely wife was just about to make me somethin' for supper she'll no doubt pour out of a can or a box."
I started to stand, but Alex nudged me and I followed his gaze. Clifford's shirt had slid up his arm when he twisted, and half a tattoo was visible; it appeared to be a rendition of a joker card.
Cliff saw where we were looking and yanked his sleeve down. "Did I stutter? You know where the door is."
He turned back to the TV, dismissing us. Carly smirked at us, but had to put some effort behind it. Things were
not all peaches and cream in the Barker household.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
ONCE WE WERE BACK IN the car, we both started talking at once. Alex stopped and let me go first.
"Wow," I said. "I'm not sure where to start. Either he's one cold-hearted guy, or that place is a powder keg."
"It's a powder keg," Alex said. "Did you smell the stress? It was rolling off him. And her ... she's a hot mess. I'd say you owe me twenty bucks, but I have a feeling if she could have bolted, she would have."
"And the tattoo," I said. "Would he be dumb enough to have killed him, then left the card?"
"Who knows?" Alex said. "Somebody was dumb enough to kill him to begin with. Why not extend the stupidity a little further?"
I called Sean to fill him in on the visit, and put him on speaker. He was as stumped as we were.
"Why didn't you reach out and try to touch him?" he asked. "Maybe get a reading off him?"
"That wouldn't have been wise," Alex said. "The guy's one atom away from spontaneous combustion. He'd have either started a fight or raised a stink about her touching him."
"Humans," Sean said, weariness in his voice. I could almost see him shaking his head. "They have such a love for rules when they work in their favor, but such a brutal disregard for them when they don't."
He wasn't wrong. Though pack rules were tough and vampire rules even tougher, there was no doubt that, even among a much more aggressive group, crime was much lower, and respect was much higher.
Human law had been barbaric in the beginning, but mostly because those who doled out the justice answered to nobody and applied it willy-nilly, or to suit their own ends. Because of that corruption, they had swung so far in the other direction in even a couple centuries that it was to the point of being absurd. Sean was right; to many humans, laws were weapons to be leveraged in order to make life work to their advantage.
"Still,” I said, “unless we wanted a fight or a lawsuit, layin' hands on him wasn't an option.”