Ground

by Kirsten Weiss

  “I was upstairs and heard a noise in Ground,” I said. “I thought it might be an animal, so I came downstairs to check. Someone knocked me down and ran out the alleyway door.”

  Hernandez’s jaw tightened. “Did you get a look at him?”

  “It was too dark,” I said. “I can't even say for sure if it was a him.” I hugged my arms against the cold and wished the deputies would close the door.

  Two more sheriff's SUVs cruised to a stop on the street outside. Uniformed men and women stepped from the cars.

  “Any idea how he or she got in?” Hernandez knelt beside the front door and examined the locks. The paned windows on top weren't smashed out. There were no scuffs around the lock. No broken wood.

  “No,” I said. “I'm guessing he came in the rear door, because he got through it pretty quickly when he left.” But the locks there had been working as well. I knew, because I'd relocked them… and left my fingerprints all over. I swallowed. “I shut and locked the back door after him. Do you think I ruined any prints?”

  Sheriff McCourt strode inside Ground, and my neck tensed. She removed her hat and tossed it on one of the small, wooden tables. “You seem to be the center of excitement this week.” She then ruffled her short, curly blond hair.

  My pulse grew loud in my ears. “I didn’t ask for it.” I curled my toes, wishing I’d put shoes on.

  “I'm sure you didn’t,” she said, gruff. “What happened?”

  I repeated my story, and the sheriff nodded.

  “Could you have left the door unlocked?” she asked.

  “I don't think so.”

  “Sheriff?” one of the deputies called from behind the curtains to the kitchen. “You might want to take a look at this.”

  “Officer Hernandez will finish taking your statement.” She strode past the long, metal counter, and through the curtains.

  “What else can you tell me about this intruder?” Hernandez asked. “Was he bigger than you?”

  “I think so.” I edged toward the polished counter, away from the open door. A chill breeze blew through it, lifting my hair.

  “Bigger than me?”

  “I...” My cheeks warmed. I didn't know. With everything that had happened last summer and in the last few days, how could I have been so unobservant? “I don't know. It was dark,” I finished lamely.

  The sheriff brushed through the curtains. She wore blue, plastic gloves now and carried a tire iron inside a clear, plastic bag. The bag was marked in big red letters: EVIDENCE. “Do you recognize this?” she asked me.

  My mouth flopped open, snapped shut. What the hell?

  “It's a tire iron,” I choked out.

  “Is it your tire iron?” she asked.

  “They all pretty much look alike, but I don't keep mine in my coffee shop.” I kept my tire iron where it belonged, in my truck. My mouth made an O. Silently, I cursed.

  “What's wrong?” she asked.

  I swallowed. “Remember when I told you how I changed a tire last week and hadn't had a chance to take the tire in for recycling?”

  She nodded.

  I grimaced. “I might have left the tire iron in the truck bed as well.”

  She lowered her head, skewering me with her stare. “You left a tire iron to rattle around in the bed of your truck?”

  “Once I'd replaced the spare with a new tire and got everything back in, it was late. By the time I realized the tire iron hadn't been put away, I was tired, so I left it.” And then I’d managed to forget about it, even if it had rattled around the truck bed. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

  The sheriff tilted her head, considering. “Earlier, you said you’d changed that tire around a week ago.”

  My cheeks warmed. “Yeah?”

  “You left the tire iron in your truck bed for an entire week?” Her blue eyes narrowed.

  “Out of sight, out of mind.” I mustered a weak smile. “I forgot about the tire iron.”

  “That was careless.”

  I couldn't argue the point. The room grew hot, and a ribbon of sweat trickled between my breasts. “I don't know how that tire iron got inside Ground.” My voice quavered, and I hated myself for the weakness. “But I didn't put it here.”

  She examined one end of the tire iron. “Looks like there's blood on it. A bit of hair too.”

  I closed my eyes. No, no, no. This wasn't happening. Not again. I met her gaze. “Whoever stole my truck, must have been the same person who broke in here. The burglar planted that.”

  “Maybe,” she said, her tone disinterested.

  “Maybe?” I gesticulated wildly. “Who else could it be? Why would I call you to Ground, knowing you'd search it, and leave a bloody tire iron for you to find?”

  “I don't know,” she said. “Why would you?”

  “I wouldn't!”

  “There's no evidence of a break-in,” the sheriff said.

  “Someone was in here,” I said. She had to believe me.

  “But there's no sign of a forced entry,” she said. “So how could someone have gotten inside Ground?”

  I laughed. I couldn't help it. Last summer, when I'd been suspected of murdering Brayden's wife, I'd been asked the same question. Karin had figured out the answer then, and I couldn't believe this was happening all over again.

  “Ms. Bonheim?” the sheriff prompted.

  “You know as well as I where all the keys are,” I said.

  “Is the spare key still in the drawer in the back room?”

  “It had better be.” I should have put it somewhere safer, but I'd figured the odds of lightning striking twice were too low, and I'd let it slide. Now my stomach felt like it was on the wrong end of a pub crawl. I pulled the keys from my pocket and tossed them to her.

  “Stay here.” She marched into the kitchen. A few minutes later, she returned. “The key was in the drawer. We're taking it into evidence. Maybe there will be some prints.”

  My muscles let go, and I sagged against the metal counter. She believed me.

  “My officers are taking prints of the alley door,” she said. “We still have yours on file, so we won't need them tonight for comparison purposes. But don't leave town.”

  She exited, the tire iron in its bag clenched in her fist.

  I shut the front door behind her and glanced at Officer Hernandez. “Will you be printing the front door too?”

  He nodded. “We know your prints will be all over it. But like the sheriff said, we've got them on file.”

  I watched the deputies work and twisted the charm on my necklace. Matt's killer had gotten inside Ground, and he’d had a key.

  I’d change the locks tomorrow, but the decision didn’t make me feel less vulnerable.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Upstairs in my kitchen, I could hear the deputies’ movements below. The grind of shifting furniture. The clank of a kitchen utensil falling to the floor. A soft curse. I fidgeted, wishing they’d go.

  Undone, I stared at the iron cauldron filled with bath salts and the two forms I'd completed. I knocked the side of one metal globe with a spoon and pulled it apart.

  The bath bomb collapsed, crumbling to glittery pink and white dust. I’d left it too long.

  My cell phone rang, and I fished it from the pocket of my jeans, answering without looking at the caller I.D. “Hello?”

  “Jayce, it's Brayden. Are you all right?”

  “I suppose you saw the sheriff's cars,” I said hollowly.

  “What sheriff's cars? What's going on?”

  I straightened. “Nothing. Forget it.”

  “It's not nothing if the sheriff's involved. What happened?”

  “It’s no big deal. Someone broke into Ground.”

  “Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”

  The rumble of his voice made my heart swell, and all I wanted was for him to be here, to bury my head on his chest. But that would be a very bad idea. The sheriff was already suspicious of us. “I'm fine.” I brushed my palm clean on the thigh of my jeans. Salt bomb
crumbles drifted to the rag rug. “Someone broke in, and I called the police. They're here now.”

  “I'm coming over.”

  “No!” I shook my head. “Sorry. It's...” Complicated. “If you didn't see the sheriff's cars, why did you call?”

  “I'm not sure,” he said. “I just had this… feeling that something was wrong. It kept getting stronger, so I called.”

  “You must be psychic,” I said lightly and dumped the remains of my bath bombs into the cauldron. If I put them in a jar and added a muslin soaking bag, I could call them bath salts.

  “Psychic only when it comes to you. Why do I know you're not telling me everything?”

  Because I couldn't tell him about finding the tire iron in Ground. It was too close to what had happened to his wife last summer. They say history repeats itself, but the similarities between his wife’s murder and now were eerie. The police had caught his wife's killer. So if the deaths were suspiciously alike, it wasn't because Alicia's killer was still at large. It was because of someone else.

  Something else.

  My hand squeezed the cell phone. The curse.

  “Everyone knows that curse story is B.S.,” he said.

  My head jerked up. Had I spoken aloud? “You know about our family curse?”

  “The whole town knows.”

  “What have you heard?” I asked, curious.

  “Only that business about your family being cursed. All the women dying in childbirth. But there's got to be something hereditary going on, right? And modern medicine has changed things.”

  “Right,” I said faintly. So logical. So simple. So wrong. “You know, the men in our family die within months of their wives.”

  “Who'd want to live without one of you?” His voice, strong and sensual, sent a ripple of anguish through me.

  My vision blurred. He wasn’t ready to believe, and that changed everything. I couldn't do this.

  “I don't like that someone got inside Ground,” he said. “Is your apartment secure?”

  “The locks to Ground and my apartment are different. They’re different keys.” That, at least, I'd fixed last summer.

  “Still—”

  “I'm going to stay with Lenore tonight.” She wouldn't mind, and she had that big house with all those spare rooms. I didn't like the idea of someone chasing me out of my home. But I needed a sister to talk things over with, and it was late, and I was rattled.

  He gusted a breath. “Good. Do you need a lift over there?”

  “Lenore's coming to get me,” I lied. I knew she’d collect me, even if I hadn't asked her yet. If I saw Brayden, I'd lose it. I didn't want to lose it.

  “Good,” he said. “If you need anything, let me know.”

  “I will. Thanks.”

  We said our goodbyes and hung up.

  I bent over the counter and braced my hands on either side of the cauldron, inhaling the mixture’s lavender scent. Brayden had always been okay with my witchcraft. Interested, even. He’d never joked about it, never acted like it was weird or silly. But he didn't believe in the curse, and that hurt. A lot. Had he ever believed in my magic?

  It shouldn't have mattered to me one way or another. People had different beliefs, and not everyone needed to share mine. As long as those close to me accepted it, that would be enough.

  But our curse didn't affect only the Bonheim women. It killed the men as well. For the last hundred and fifty years, every Bonheim mother had died at the birth of her first child. Every first child had been a daughter. And every husband had died within a few months before or after the birth. It wasn't a myth. It was fact. We had the family Bible and genealogy records to prove it.

  Karin's boyfriend, Nick, knew the score and believed. He'd chosen to be with Karin anyway. Could I be with Brayden if he didn't understand the risk?

  My breath caught. The answer to that was easy: no.

  So why was it so hard to set him free?

  Straightening off the counter, I called Lenore.

  “Jayce. What's happened?”

  “Can I stay at your place tonight?”

  “Sure. What’s going on? Something has happened, hasn’t it?”

  “Someone broke into Ground tonight. It’s no big deal, but I don't feel like staying here.”

  There was a long pause, then, “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “Thanks. Bye.”

  We hung up.

  I shoved clothing and makeup, hair products and devices into a leather travel bag. On impulse, I grabbed my favorite Tarot deck as well and dropped that on top of the clothing.

  Someone knocked at the interior entrance to my apartment, and I opened the door.

  Officer Hernandez stood at the top of the steps. “We're finished here.”

  “Thanks. I'll see you out.”

  I followed him downstairs and walked him to the front door.

  “Take care of yourself, Jayce.” He clapped my shoulder, and I suddenly felt lighter. I had friends in this town, even if they were duty-bound to arrest me should the evidence demand it.

  “Thanks,” I said. “You too.”

  He hesitated on the doorstep. “How’s Lenore?”

  “Same as she always is.” I angled my head. “Why?”

  “No reason.” He strode, whistling, to his SUV.

  Puzzled, I locked the door after him and hurried upstairs in time to hear Lenore pounding on the apartment’s exterior door.

  I locked up and followed her, her long white coat fluttering like a specter. In the alley, I tossed my bag into the back seat of her Volvo. We drove to her house — our aunt's old house. I wriggled from the gray car, struggling to extract my bag, and dropped it on the gravel driveway.

  Light streamed through the windows of the gabled house. It had a fairytale look to it — shingled on the top, stone on the bottom, and curling beams beneath the eaves.

  I followed my sister up the porch steps. She unlocked the door, and I trailed inside.

  Wiping my feet on the rag rug in the entry, I inhaled the scent of home. Though Ellen had died months ago, the house still smelled like her. A stab of pain caught me behind the heart and squeezed.

  “Which room do you want?” Lenore asked.

  “I'll take my old bedroom.”

  “You know where the sheets are.”

  I nodded and trudged upstairs to my childhood room. Ellen had redecorated it when I’d left for college, converting it into a chic guest room with a sisal carpet. Vintage travel postcards in a stand lined one shelf. Antique women's hats rested on forms on another. The full-sized bed was covered in a simple, bamboo-colored spread.

  I dumped my leather satchel and went to the linen closet in the hallway, grabbed a set of sheets and pillowcases. When I returned to my room, Lenore had already stripped the mattress. Together, we remade the bed.

  “What happened?” She tucked the sheet beneath the mattress.

  I told her about the break-in. “It had to have been Matt’s killer. He must have left the tire iron in my kitchen intentionally, to frame me.”

  “But the sheriff didn't arrest you.” She shook a pillow into its case, propped it against the wooden headboard.

  I collapsed onto the half-made bed. “No. Not yet.”

  “Why would you call to report a break-in, knowing you had a murder weapon stashed in Ground?” She braced her fists on her slim hips. “Of course you're being framed. She'd have to be an idiot not to see it, and no matter what you think of Sheriff McCourt, she's no idiot.”

  “But she was suspicious.”

  “She's paid to be suspicious. That's her job.”

  “It was more than that.” I couldn't figure out why she hadn't arrested me, and I wished Lenore wasn’t so determined to explain it away.

  “How could someone have gotten inside Ground again?”

  Determinedly, I stared at the wood-beamed ceiling. “Do you have to ask?”

  I heard the creak of a chair — Lenore sitting. “We've been through all this before,
haven't we?”

  “There are no keys to Ground lying around for people to steal.”

  “But you said there was no sign of a break-in.”

  “Right. So the burglar had to have had a key, because I did not leave the doors unlocked.”

  “What about the spare key in the drawer in that little back room?”

  “It was still in the drawer.”

  “What if the burglar replaced the key after he or she ditched the tire iron?”

  A spider worked in a corner of the ceiling, its spindly legs spinning a web.

  “Maybe,” I said. “But how would they have gotten the key in the first place? I know you and Karin think I'm reckless. But after Alicia's murder, I've been careful about the keys.”

  “Your assistant manager has one, right?”

  “Darla?” I asked. “She wouldn't kill Matt.”

  “How do you know that?”

  I raised my head. “Because it's Darla!” She loved her job, largely because I refused to fire her no matter how many mugs she broke. Poor Darla was the unluckiest person ever. If she really had been cursed by the fairy, I couldn’t fire her over that. It wouldn’t be fair.

  “You don't know what goes on in her head,” Lenore said. “What do you know about Darla’s private life?”

  Not as much as I should. My natural inclination was to be friends with everyone, but sometimes you had to be the boss. So I'd found myself creeping around the edges of friendship, not getting too close to my employees. I didn’t like it. “I just know her, okay? Maybe I don't know every detail of her personal life, but I know what kind of person she is. And Darla’s no killer.”

  “But your other employees would have had access to that key.”

  “No, they wouldn't have, because I keep that desk locked now. Only Darla and I have the key to that drawer.”

  “Could someone have forced the lock?” she asked.

  I rolled onto my side. “I'm no expert at lock picking. I doubt anyone who works for Ground is either. I'm telling you, no one had access to that spare key.”

  Graceful as a dancer, she stretched out her long legs. “Matt did some work for you. Did you give him a key? Maybe the killer took it off his body?”

  “I've been careful! I'm telling you, I was always there when he was installing those damned shelves. I let him in and locked up after he left. There was no reason...” I trailed off. Kuh-rap.