by Alex P. Berg
The elf’s cheeks reddened, and he bobbed his head before shuffling toward the door. It was only as he headed into the hall that I put the pieces together. Emmett’s occasional stammering. His awkward smiles. The fact that he’d called me by my first name, as if it were an accident, but the red cheeks that followed suggesting otherwise.
Was Coroner Jowynn… sweet on me?
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I sat at the small round eat-in that served as Cliff’s and my dining table. Once again, I’d failed to think ahead and pick up food on my way home, but Cliff hadn’t been so absent minded. As I’d walked through the front door to our apartment, I’d found him hard at work in the kitchen, short brown hair tousled and his broad shoulders filling out a plain white tee. Bacon sizzled in a pan while flapjacks from a store-bought box of Aunt Mae’s mix fluffed up in another. He’d even cut up some apples and oranges and tossed them in a bowl with berries, all of which sat upon the eat-in waiting to be consumed.
A more persnickety individual might’ve complained that the meal was breakfast and not dinner, but given the last time I’d cooked I not only infused our home with meat smoke but also accidentally invented a risotto soup, I figured I could overlook the food choices. Besides, I was hungry enough to eat anything, freshly-cooked or not. I’d thanked Cliff and poured a couple of glasses of iced tea, and within minutes of taking off my shoes, I was seated at the table, stuffing my face with syrup-slathered hotcakes and slabs of crispy bacon.
Cliff spoke as I ate, telling me about his day, but I wasn’t giving him my full attention. All through my subway ride and resulting walk home, I’d kept thinking about the case, and as much as I hated to admit it, the host of fresh smells in the kitchen hadn’t turned off my brain. If anything, the addition of fuel to my belly was helping me develop new ideas.
First, there was the asbestos problem. I wasn’t willing to accept that the lack of fibers in Stella’s remains meant she hadn’t been cremated at Fogel and Sons. Perhaps I just wanted there to be a connection because it made sense that Stella’s body had been cremated in a furnace rather than a backyard bonfire or a steel trashcan someone had converted into a forge in their garage. Fogel and Sons was the only crematorium we’d visited where the furnaces might’ve been used after hours, though Fogel’s gas bill suggested they’d been used that way for weeks. Still, there might be a connection with the asbestos and Stella’s murder. Asbestos was used as a fire retardant and an insulator, so perhaps asbestos gloves had been used to transfer Stella’s hot remains to the aviary. Afterwards, the murderer could’ve returned to the crematorium and burned the protective gear to get rid of the evidence. It was a convoluted scheme, and there was little chance of incriminating evidence being left on the gloves, but a criminal who’d never committed murder might not know that.
Cliff spoke as I chewed, both on the bacon and my thoughts. “So as we pulled up to this house, I had a bad feeling, you know? It wasn’t that the place was run down or that the lawn was hidden by more junk than at a scrapyard. I’ve made plenty of house calls to shacks, and though I don’t like clutter, I can deal with it on someone else’s property. But there was something about this place I couldn’t put my finger on. Maybe it was that the blinds were cinched tight or that the windows had enough grime on them so you couldn’t have seen through them even if the blind were drawn. Anyway, my TO had the same gut feeling, so we were on guard as we headed toward the door.”
I nodded, trying to act as if I was paying attention even though I wasn’t. Maybe the asbestos was a red herring. What I needed to focus on was Stella’s involvement in the blackmail scheme. I’d been too keen on figuring out why Stella might’ve taken part in the nude photoshoot without trying to understand who might’ve benefitted from her death. As Moss had said, rage and jealousy alone usually weren’t strong enough motivators for someone to commit murder. So why kill Stella? Had she agreed to take part in the blackmail at a lover’s behest and later scrapped it for fear of being caught? Or because she couldn’t bring herself to extort a man she’d once loved? Did that cause her partner to double-cross and murder her? Or was the individual blackmailing JT Vernon also forcing Stella into actions against her will? Did they have blackmail on her that they used to create blackmail against JT? If Stella had reached a breaking point and refused to cooperate further, they might’ve killed her, especially now that they had dirt on her husband, but who would do such a thing? Maximillian Bumblefoot? The man came across as conniving and shrewd, but he wasn’t a murderer, was he?
“…and while we’re talking to Mr. Hammond at the door, we hear a muffled thump from the back. So we ask him, is everything okay? And that’s when this guy gets really cagey. Because of the noise, my TO asks if we can come in. Hammond flat out refuses, but you don’t need a warrant to enter under exigent circumstances, and let me tell you, the guy who lurched out from the back hallway with his arms tied behind his back and a gag in his mouth was about as exigent as it gets. My TO reached for his sidearm, but damn if that Hammond wasn’t quicker than he looked. He…”
As I thought about Bumblefoot, my mind drifted to Dean’s actions outside his office. He’d pushed me to speak up and take charge, which he’d claimed was driven by his desire to make me valuable in the eyes of the captain, but why was Dean so keen on keeping me around? Was it that he saw me as a valuable addition to the team, as he claimed, or was there an ulterior motive? Did Dean… like me? He’d treated me kindly and encouraged me, but it seemed to me that he treated most people with courtesy. He had opened up to me about his dead fiance, though, which was most certainly not something most people did with new colleagues, regardless of circumstance. Of course, I might be projecting my feelings onto him. I’d found him striking from the first moment I saw him, so calm and collected and full of confidence, though if I was being honest, there was more to him that I liked. He filled out a pair of tight slacks nicely, too. Still, beyond being kind and open, he hadn’t done anything to suggest he was romantically interested in me, not like Coroner Jowynn. I still couldn’t believe how nervous he’d seemed around me. Did I cut that striking of a figure? I might in a low-cut dress, but not in a police uniform, surely. And yet, there was no question in my mind that Emmett liked me. I might not be great at reading men, but I wasn’t blind either. And if Emmett could find me attractive, why not Dean?
“…and so I’ve got Hammond in a chokehold, but he’s fighting me tooth and nail. We stumble into the kitchen when I hear another person barreling around the corner. It’s Hammond’s partner. He’s got a wicked looking spear point knife in hand, probably eight inches in length. He lunges, but he doesn’t notice the guy with the gag on the floor. He stumbles over him, hitting the ground like a sack of bricks, and by this point my TO is flying in to get my back. His uniform is stained with his own vomit from when Hammond kicked him in the stomach, but… hey, Nell? Nell!”
I looked up from my pancakes, blinking away thoughts of Dean and Emmett and the case. “Huh?”
Cliff looked at me with those dark brown eyes of his, the thicker than normal stubble on his cheeks failing to hide the square jaw underneath. He wasn’t frowning, but he wasn’t smiling either. “Are you listening to anything I’m saying, Nell?”
“Uh… of course I am. House call. Guy. Knife. Vomit.”
Cliff lifted a suspicious eyebrow. “Are you sure? Because here I am telling you about my most exciting day on the force by far, and I feel like I’m talking to a brick wall. You’ve looked at the bacon more than you have me.”
“I’m paying attention.”
“But not interacting,” said Cliff. “Not asking me anything as I go, not even to see if I’m okay. I’m fine by the way. Didn’t get knifed.”
“Not to ruin your story, but I kind of figured.”
Cliff snorted and shook his head. He grabbed the bowl of fruit and spooned some onto his plate. “Right. Maybe you can tell me about your day since clearly mine wasn’t interesting enough.”
As the slightly l
onger hair on top of Cliff’s head bobbed, it struck me that it was more mussed than usual. From the tussle at Hammond’s? Maybe I should’ve asked… “Trust me, my day was not that interesting.”
Cliff looked up. I thought he might be relieved, but he looked even more annoyed. “So you have a boring day, yet that’s still more engaging than what I went through?”
I frowned. “What? No. I mean, I had a lot going on. The case I’m working on is super weird, and there are a lot of pieces I’m trying to fit together. I’m not ignoring you, I just have a lot on my mind.”
Cliff snorted again. “Yeah, well you might not be trying to ignore me…”
I set my fork down. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Cliff sighed as he returned the bowl to the middle of the table. “It means that since you’ve embarked on this adventure with your detective friends, I’ve barely seen you, much less talked to you. For crying out loud, Nell, a few days ago you were questioning whether police work was right for you. Now it’s all you think about? Don’t get me wrong, I think you were right to stick it out. I told you as much, but it’s a big shift from being ready to give it up to caring about nothing else.”
“That’s not a fair comparison,” I said. “A few days ago, I was stuck in a partnership from hell with no way out. The way out arrived, and now I’m getting to use my brain and work on murder cases instead of being stuck on the beat.”
“Like me?” said Cliff.
“I thought you liked patrol. I mean, the day you had today sounds like a thrill ride. Isn’t that enough?”
“It wasn’t enough for you,” said Cliff. “Not when you decided to jump to the front of the line and become a detective.”
“I’m not a detective,” I said. “I never claimed to be. I’m an officer, same as you. And who said I jumped to the front of the line? Dean demanded my transfer, if you’ll recall. I didn’t have a say.”
Cliff shook his head. “That’s not the way you phrased it the first night. You made it seem as if you transferred of your own free will.”
It’s possible I had, but I was starting to get annoyed under Cliff’s negative barrage. “Is this an envy thing? Are you annoyed a detective took me under his wing instead of you?”
Cliff threw his hands into the air. “No! The thing is that you’re not interested in my life, and I’m trying to figure out why.”
“I told you, I’m busy,” I said. “I just started with a new team. There’s a lot of pressure with this move to the Fifth. My focus needs to be on my work.”
Cliff averted his gaze. “Yeah. Maybe it does.”
I felt rage rising up in my throat, but there might’ve been a spoonful of nervous bile in it, too. “And what is that supposed to mean?”
Cliff sighed. He tilted his head to meet mine, his eyes dark pools. “It means you didn’t seem that interested in what was going on in my life when we were both at the Williams Street precinct. I attributed it to you being stuck with a TO from hell and to hating your job. I thought maybe police work wasn’t for you, but now you’ve switched to a new team and you’re invigorated and engaged. It’s all you think about, where all your focus is. And yet despite everything that’s changed, there’s one constant. You’re still not interested in my day.”
The bile in my throat rose higher. “Cliff…”
He rose from his chair, eyes downturned and lips pursed. “I need to take a shower and get to bed. I have first shift in the morning. Sorry, Nell.”
Cliff swept past me en route to our bedroom. He closed the door gently, which was far worse than slamming it behind him. It showed he wasn’t acting irrationally out of anger. That he’d given his actions the requisite thought they required. And if I was honest with myself, I didn’t think Cliff was wrong. I hadn’t paid attention to him throughout dinner. I’d vacillated between thinking about the case and thinking about Emmett and Dean. While one subject was understandable, the other wasn’t.
I sighed as I stood, gathering plates to take to the kitchen. I didn’t have any answers, and I didn’t think I’d come across any before I went to bed. The one thing I did know was that I didn’t wanted to venture into our bedroom until after Cliff had fallen asleep, and that alone seemed to me like a bad sign.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Ogden was the only one at his desk when I arrived at our third floor cluster, same as the morning before. I gave him a nod even though his back was to me. “Morning, Justice.”
He flicked a wave at me over his shoulder, pen in hand. “Morning, Phair.”
Between the sheaf of papers on his desk and the pen, I’d figured out his game. “Already stuck filling out forms? It’s not even nine, you know.”
He turned my way. “Technically, I’m writing a report. Didn’t get a chance to do it last night. Or rather, I chose to go to sleep at a reasonable hour rather than do it.”
I paused outside my desk’s partition. “A report on the Tarot Card Killer lead?”
Justice rolled his eyes. “Calling it a lead would be like calling a leashed possum a dog. More like an attention-starved wannabe celebrity looking to launch themselves into a spotlight.”
“That bad, huh?”
Justice snorted. “I hate when we get a tips on cases with public notoriety. Not only do they bring out the crazies, they bring out the self-dealers, the attention whores, the folks who’d do anything for ten seconds of fame. Drives me nuts. I wish we could ignore every tip that comes over the phone, but you’ve got to do your due diligence. And since this one was about the Tarot Card Killer, of course Dean’s going to go the extra mile.”
I glanced at Dean’s empty desk. “Is he still checking out the lead?”
Justice leveled a judgmental finger in my direction. “I told you, it’s not a lead. It’s a waste of time, but yes. Normally, he’s excellent at separating bogus tips from ones that have the scent of truth on them, but not so much this time. He’s too focused on catching this guy. Can’t allow anything to slip by him, even if it means humoring the nutcases. He’s—”
“Obsessed?” I said.
Justice frowned. “You said it, not me. And it’s not a bad thing. I mean, it might be for his personal well-being and mental health, but not for catching the killer.”
The good thing about Dean keeping his desk so organized was that it was evident when someone left something there for him to peruse. This time it was a grey folder with CSU stamped across the front.
I picked it up and showed it to Justice. “Is this on the Vernon murder?”
Justice nodded. “You can take a look. I already did. It’s from their sweep of Stella’s car. Unfortunately, they didn’t find any blood in the trunk, nor did they find any hairs that don’t seem to have belonged to Stella herself.”
I quickly scanned the report. The lack of blood or other tissues surprised me, but not as much as what they did find. “She had a suitcase in the trunk?”
Justice nodded. “She’d packed clothes. Toiletries. Everything a woman would need to survive on her own for a few weeks, other than food.”
“She was planning to run away,” I said. “The question is whether she planned on having anyone join her.”
Justice shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine, but if so, it would appear that extra someone was taking their own car. That or Stella got murdered before they got a chance to slide their luggage into the trunk alongside hers.”
I slapped the folder against my hand a couple times, thinking about the implications of the suitcase, but I didn’t want to let myself get carried away, either with Stella’s car or any of my lingering personal thoughts. There were other more pressing matters to attend to.
I dropped the file on Dean’s desk. “Well, we can worry about that later. Right now we need to visit Fogel and Sons.”
Justice lifted a brow. “We do?”
I nodded. “Coroner Jowynn found traces of asbestos in the sample we scraped out of Fogel’s furnaces.”
Justice blinked a few times. “Asbesto
s?”
“I think you’d agree we need to figure out what the hell is going on.”
Justice did agree. We headed to the parking garage and piled into his Phantom before hitting the road. Justice asked me a few questions about the asbestos as we drove, all of which I answered to the best of my ability, but apparently I was either too tight-lipped or too focused on buildings in the far distance for Justice’s tastes.
As the ogre slowed for a red light, he gave me a nod. “You okay?”
I brought my attention back inside the vehicle. “I’m fine. Why?”
Justice shrugged. “Moss made it seem like you were more of a talker. You didn’t say much when we were driving around yesterday morning, either.”
The biggest reason I hadn’t opened my trap was that I thought Justice might eat me if I mentioned the encounter with the flamboyantly dressed man at the bank, but to his credit, I don’t think I’d spoken much before that either. In my defense, I’d been slightly hung over from our trip to the Jjade Palace, and beyond that, I hadn’t accepted that I should take a prominent role in our investigations. I still hadn’t, but I was trying, hence my suggestion to visit Fogel.
I shook my head. “I’m not trying to be antisocial. I’ve just had a lot on my mind.”
The light turned green. Justice grimaced as he gave the Phantom some gas. “It’s the tarot murders, isn’t it? I shouldn’t have told Dean to include you. It’s tough when you’re so close to a case. In some ways, Dean is, too.”
“It’s not that.” And that was the truth. Though having been in the proximity of the killer had given me the willies, I’d mostly gotten over it. As a member of a homicide team, I’d probably end up spending lots of time in the vicinity of murderers without knowing it.
Justice gave me some side eye. “You sure?”
I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to open up to Justice, but he seemed genuinely concerned. Besides, I didn’t want him to ask Dean to pull me off a case because of a misunderstanding. “Have you been in many serious relationship, Justice?”