Cleo leaned forward and held her phone up. “Linda texted me at three from Leslie and Tammy’s room, to see if I’d made it back to our room. When I didn’t answer, she came and checked on me. She poked her head in, saw I was in bed and said I was sound asleep and snoring like a lumberjack. Then she checked on Leslie and Tammy. Leslie was already sound asleep in bed and Tammy was already passed out, buried under the covers. So she sent me another text to call her in the morning when I got up because she’d probably already be at some yoga class on the beach, and then she went to bed, too. I have the texts right here on my phone.”
Okay, so she mostly had an alibi. She was in bed asleep. “And everyone else? Where were they?”
Cleo ran a hand over her T-shirt to smooth it over her waist. “Leslie told the police she went back to her room as well—the one she was sharing with Tammy—and Tammy was already zonked out, just like Linda said. Everyone was accounted for, and we told the police that.”
I guess there wasn’t much else to ask. But dead ends are my thing. I ran into them with zeal and I ran into them often.
“Do you know of anyone who’d want to hurt Doug, Cleo? Anyone at all?”
Cleo grimaced. “I’m sure he made lots of women angry, but I can’t think of anyone who’d want to kill him for being a cheat. Most of the women he hooked up with were one-night stands, as far as I know.”
Still, the possibility remained that a woman scorned could be a suspect. It wouldn’t hurt to look at Doug’s social media for clues. We’d hit the jackpot a time or two on Facebook. It could happen again.
Then something occurred to me. In all the chaos, I hadn’t asked her why she’d come back to the shop. “Why did you come back here today, Cleo?”
Tucking her hair behind her ears, her sigh was sad. “Carys. I wanted to see if we could try and contact her again. I can’t believe she was here. I had to come back. I need something…something hopeful. Especially after today… I need to know what she was trying to tell me. And I wanted to apologize for my behavior. I’m sorry I hit Leslie. I’m not normally so…so reactive.”
I ignored the attempt at an apology. None was necessary and I said as much. “No apology necessary. I realize you’d reached a boiling point.”
“Cleo? Would you be willing to try and contact her again? If she turns up, I can do my best to repeat what she’s saying and maybe it will make sense to you?” Win asked, his voice gentle and soft, but most of all, considerate—one of the reasons I loved him so much.
Cleo bobbed her head with vigor, her big eyes on fire with hope. “Absolutely. I’ll even pay you to try again.”
Holding up a hand, I shook my head. “No, Cleo. That’s unnecessary. We’re happy to try to contact her again if it will bring you—”
“Cleo Wallace?” I heard Dana call out in an unusually aggressive tone as he burst through the shop’s door.
We all turned our heads in Dana’s direction, two other police officers, along with Detective Starsky, following behind him, feet pounding the floor.
Cleo jumped up, her voice shaky. “What’s happening?”
I instantly put my body in front of her and wrapped a protective arm around my back. “Officer Nelson? What’s this about?”
But Detective Moore, a.k.a. Starsky, who still held a grudge against me because, if you remember, I’d figured out his partner, Detective Montgomery (or Hutch, as I’d once sarcastically called him) was dirty before he did, blew past Dana and pushed me out of the way, his face angry.
His hard eyes and looming presence, meant to intimidate, did just that to poor Cleo. She shrank back with a small gasp when he growled, “It’s none of your business what’s going on, Miss Cartwright.”
“I’ll ask you but once to keep your hands to yourself when it comes to my fiancée, Detective Moore,” Win growled, reaching between us to set me behind him. I didn’t have to see his jaw to know it was clenched hard.
But Starsky wasn’t having it today. He cocked an eyebrow at Win as if daring him, and Dana intervened. “Detective! We have a job to do here.”
Starsky sneered at Win before he said, “Cleo Wallace. You’re under arrest for the murder of Douglas Wallace. You have the right to remain silent…”
As he droned on and read Cleo her rights, she sobbed helplessly. He cuffed her and pulled her out the door all while she begged me to help her, making my heart twist into a knot, and I fought the impulse to punch Starsky’s lights out.
As he pulled her from my store and I promised to do what I could to help her, I noted movement at the back of the store behind Cleo’s retreating form.
When I saw who it was, I sighed and rolled my eyes.
Oh, for the love of toad spit. Now?
Now Aunt Priss decides to show up?
Ugh. This day.
Chapter 10
After they cuffed a shocked, crying Cleo and hauled her off to the police car with Detective Jerkface in the lead, I turned to Dana, disgust in my voice. “You can’t possibly believe Cleo did this, can you? I thought she had an alibi?”
Or at least that’s what she’d told us—that she was sleeping in her room and Linda could verify.
But she did say she’d seen him earlier last night and never told her friends…maybe that wasn’t the truth?
No. I’m pretty good at picking up vibes on people, and while I wish I could do that with everyone, it didn’t always work that way or it would be much easier to catch a killer, wouldn’t it?
But Cleo’s vibe was anything but malicious and murderous. It just wasn’t.
Dana rocked back on his heels, his razor-sharp cheeks sucking inward. “You know I can’t tell you anything about the investigation, Miss Cartwright. It’s against the rules.”
I put my hands on my hips and made a face. “No, I know you won’t tell me anything because of rules and protocol and all that police jargon you’re always throwing at me like we’re in an endless episode of Law and Order SVU, but listen up. I can help, Dana. You know what I can do,” I emphasized, using every eye signal I had in my bag of eye signal tricks to remind him I see ghosts and Win hears them.
But Dana pretended not to see or even hear what I was suggesting as the other two officers prepared to leave and go back to the station, their young, fresh faces unjaded by their jobs.
“This is a police matter, Miss Cartwright,” he replied in his “end of subject” tone.
Blah, blah, blah. However, Win knew where I was going and he did what he did best—he charmed the other two officers so I might have a moment alone with Dana before he became wrapped up in questioning Cleo.
“Gentleman?” he announced with a broad smile on his face in his very amicable British accent. “Whilst you’re here, as a civilian, and one who wishes to always abide by the letter of the law, might I pick your brains about our security camera? I have a question or two for officials such as yourselves.” He slapped them on the back in his jovial manner and motioned to the camera outside the door. “Come, won’t you? I’ll show you.”
Win led the men outside, leaving me with alone with Dana, who muttered, “Subtle.”
I gripped the sleeve of his shirt, knowing exactly what the problem with Dana was. Dana mostly believed—but I’m not sure he totally believed. He didn’t have a choice with Belfry. I mean, Bel speaks. But to believe, truly believe we talk to the dead? He was struggling with the notion. I saw it glaring back at me in his eyes. But I’m not sure why.
Again, I have a talking bat he’s pretty much buddies with. He’s even had Win ask Arkady a question or two.
So I didn’t get his reluctance.
What other kind of proof did he need? I know at first he was all manner of hesitant and almost wouldn’t even acknowledge Belfry’s existence due to his religious beliefs and how they’re attached to witches with all sorts of Satan worshipping and a bunch of nonsense I’d proven wrong.
But I thought he was over it, and he was frustrating me no end with his doubts.
“You know I can help y
ou, Dana. Stop pretending what we do doesn’t exist and let us help. Do you want to solve the crime and find the killer or do you want keep everything by the books because you can’t be open enough to let the afterlife help?”
He rasped a sigh, clenching his jaw as he lifted his chin in a defiant gesture that left me puzzled. “How about you tell me what you know and I’ll decide if you can help?”
“Just can’t let go of the Policing for Dummies rule book can you?”
He stared down at me in his very Dana way. “It’s my job, Miss Cartwright. One I take—”
“Very seriously.” I flapped my hands at him and rolled up the long batwing sleeves of my Madame Zoltar muumuu. “Yeah, yeah. I know, but you might want to take us seriously, too. If we help you behind the scenes, you’ll be such a crime-solving star, they’re going to give you your own HBO special.”
He rolled his tongue in his cheek. “But I don’t want my own HBO special.”
I blew a raspberry at him. “Of course you do. Everyone wants their own HBO special, Officer Butt Clenched. If someone comes to you and offers you your own HBO special, you take it, hear me?” I rubbed my fingers together. “That’s money in the bank. Until HBO comes knocking, listen to me carefully. What I’m telling you is we have insider information. As inside as it gets,” I said, pointing at the ceiling.
Crossing his arms over his broad chest, he looked me dead in the eye as the sun glanced over his angled face, awash with skepticism. “Okay, what do you have?”
I grinned, but then I frowned. “Well…”
Wait. What did I have? Cleo’s dead twin and some gobbledygook words Win couldn’t understand, Aunt Priss—who’d already disappeared—and a message in chalk from the great beyond that said, “Not his. Mine.”
Fine. I didn’t have as much as I initially thought, but I was going to sell it like some kinda snake oil salesman who needs to buy his baby some new shoes.
Dana lifted a skeptical eyebrow. “Miss Cartwright. Daylight’s burning.”
I squared my shoulders and prepared to sell, sell, sell. With an excited voice, I leaned into him and whispered from the corner of my mouth. “Guess who showed up at the reading for Tammy Parker’s bachelorette party?”
“She booked you to do a reading for her bachelorette party?”
“No. Cleo did. She’s the matron of honor. She arranged the reading as a fun activity for the bride-to-be and her bachelorette festivities. You should already know that, shouldn’t you?”
Dana pulled his pad from the pocket of his uniform, ready to take notes. “Who showed up, Miss Cartwright?
I widened my eyes as if I held the secret to immortality. “Cleo’s dead twin sister showed up at the reading for the bridal party. Yep. She sure did.”
Now his eyebrow almost disappeared into his hairline. “At Tammy Parker’s bachelorette activity?”
Nudging him, I nodded. “Yep. You know her?”
“She’s younger than me. I know of her, and I vaguely know her parents. They have that big house over on the other side of the cliffs. Her father is some kind of lawyer—or was before he retired. But that’s about it.”
Right. Tammy had mentioned they all came from some kind of money. “The one with the huge columns and the front porch a mile long?”
“That’s the one.”
“Well, like I said, they were all in here today for a reading. Sort of a fun bachelorette party activity.” I was repeating myself, and it was annoying him, but I couldn’t think of anything that would convince him we could help and he needed to give me all the details on why the police had arrested Cleo.
They had to have some kind of evidence.
“Do you need to add ginkgo to your diet, Miss Cartwright?”
I raised an eyebrow in question. “For?”
“For your memory. You already told me that. So my question is—and?”
“And I told you. Cleo’s sister showed up. She’s been dead for years.”
He popped his lips and squinted his eyes, growing tired of my runaround. “And?”
Yeah. And, Stevie?
Okay, so a snake oil salesman I’m not. But I repeated he same words again. “Aaand her sister—her name is Carys, in case you wondered—showed up. That’s all. But it’s kind of a big deal. Also, she was clearly trying to tell us something.”
“Like?”
“What’s with all the questions? You’d think you were some kind of officer of the law.”
“Uh-huh. You don’t know what she was trying to tell you, do you?” Win told me sometimes when these apparitions appear, they don’t always make sense.”
I cocked my head and gave him a strange look. “Win talks to you about the ghosts we see?”
“We are friends, Stevie. Good friends, by the way.”
He said it as if I was silly to think Win wouldn’t share that big a secret with him even after I’d laid my guts bare and he thought I was half-mad.
“So Win talks to you about hearing them, huh?”
Dana’s nod was sage. “He does.”
“And you believed him?”
“I believe he believes. I believe you believe. I want to believe you. Just as I want to believe Win.”
I sucked in my cheeks. “But you don’t completely believe because you can’t see it for yourself?”
Now he rolled his eyes with what looked like guilt. “Listen, Stevie. This has been a lot to take in. I’m still processing Belfry and reincarnation and—”
“Say no more,” I replied stiffly. I’d had enough. No more energy spent convincing him I wasn’t a liar. I wasn’t up to it. I’d already done all the convincing I had in my arsenal.
And I was angry. After all of this. After Belfry and our origin story—after Dana’s deceased girlfriend Sophia, for pity’s sake, who gave me a message to pass on to him—and everything in between since then, he was still a skeptic?
That could only mean he thought we were liars and today wasn’t the day to test my believability.
His eyes grew cloudy as mine narrowed. “Stevie—”
“Nope, buddy. Don’t you Stevie me. Do. Not. After everything we’ve proven to you—solid proof—I’m not up to proving anything else. I’m done. I’m not going to stand here while you doubt my very existence—my validity that I was once a witch. That hurts my feelings. So take your rules and your badge and your rigid, inflexible baloney and stuff them up your stiff-as-a-board keister. My services are no longer available to you.” I pointed to the door, where I saw Win and the other two officers discussing our security cameras under the cloudless sky. “Go, and go now.”
Dana’s face collapsed. “Aw, c’mon, Stevie, don’t be like that. I just—”
I clucked my tongue at him, hoping he felt shamed. “You just blew it, Officer Nelson. That’s what you just did. Go. Please.”
Turning my back to him, I headed toward the reading room where there was plenty to clean up and I could work off my bone-deep disappointment. I’m sure if steam could come out of my ears, it would blow from them like the stack of a coal train.
Stomping to the broken wall of beads separating the store and the reading room, I pushed my way through and fought the urge to launch a piece of our crushed table at Dana’s head.
The nerve of that man. Honestly, what else did he need for proof?
Minutes later, I heard the door close and more footsteps as I stood in the middle of the debris, seething.
“Stephania?”
I took a deep breath, stretching my chest as far as it would go and blew it out. “International Man of Mystery?”
“I hear you’ve had a misunderstanding with my bro-friend,” Win joked.
I toed the crushed battery-operated candles and made a face. “Did you then? Did he come running to you to tattle on me?”
I felt Win approach from behind and place his hands on my shoulders. “Well, no, Dove. He sent me a text.”
“Coward.”
“Stephania…”
I heard the admonishment i
n Win’s tone, and it annoyed me almost as much as Dana had.
Shaking my head, I moved away from Win’s embrace and turned to face him with a wag of my finger. “Oh no. Don’t you dare defend him, Win. We could possibly help Cleo, who I know you know is innocent, and even after everything we’ve shown him, after Belfry, for spit’s sake, he has the audacity to be skeptical? Nope. I repeat, don’t you dare defend him. I’m so disappointed in him right now, and I’m really questioning our friendship. I’m not going to prove myself over and over, Win. I refuse!”
Win reached out a hand to me, encouraging me to take it, and when I did, he said, “I’m not going to defend Dana. I’m simply going to say, it takes him a great deal of time to come to terms with how he feels about things, based on his more conservative, semi-religious beliefs. The afterlife and its existence is a struggle for him. We learned that when he was grappling with you being a witch.”
I knew Win saw it from both sides of the fence. I’ve always been paranormal, for lack of a better word, and he had always been a human—until he wasn’t.
But by now, Dana should trust him and his word. And for that matter, me and my word.
My hand flew up in the air as I looked at Win’s handsome face, full of understanding for poor non-believer Dana. “And that’s okay with you? Being friends with someone who doesn’t totally believe in you and a big part of your life?”
I didn’t understand that. Being a witch, communicating with the dead, was an enormous part of my world—an enormous part of who I am, of my soul. I can’t pretend his disbelief doesn’t hurt my feelings. Because really, what’s the other side of this coin from Dana’s perspective?
That I’m either a liar or one cupcake shy of a dozen.
Win squeezed my hand and gave me a warm smile. “I’m okay with allowing him the time he needs to come to grips with so much information. Even I would have been skeptical, had what happened to me not happened, Dove. Wasn’t it you talking about how upset I’d grown over those terrible women and their skepticism? Which, by the way, wasn’t the problem. It was the total disregard and disrespect for the importance of what you do.”
Where There's A Witch, There's A Way (Witchless In Seattle Mysteries Book 13) Page 9