Drowning in Amber (A Marie Jenner Mystery Book 2)

by E. C. Bell

  Marie:

  Oh Yay! Cops!

  SOONER THAN I would have believed possible, we were up against the wall, faces pressed into the disgusting bricks, as the cops went up and down the line, frisking us and asking us for our IDs.

  “Never seen you before,” one of the cops breathed into my hair as he grabbed way too much of me, making sure I didn’t have a bomb in my bra. “What brings you to this little playground?”

  “I was just out for a walk,” I said.

  “Really?”

  “Yep.” He glared at me until I turned my eyes down and stared at my shoes. “Sorry,” I whispered. “Yes, sir.”

  “Better,” he said. “So, you’re trying to tell me you were alone? In this park? Just out for a stroll?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you somehow end up in this alley. That’s what you’re trying to tell me?”

  I didn’t blame him for sounding the way he did, even though I was pretty desperate for him to believe me and let me go. “Yeah,” I said. “There were no signs.”

  “What?” Sharp tone in his voice—that probably meant things were about to get bad for me. “What did you say?”

  “Nothing,” I whispered. “I didn’t know. Really.”

  “So, you’re just an innocent bystander, out for a stroll.” The sarcasm dripped from the cop’s voice, and again I didn’t blame him. It sounded more stupid every time he repeated it.

  The problem was it was also pretty close to the truth. So I thought I’d try again. “It’s the truth.”

  The cop’s eyes went cold. “Enough. Shut your mouth and get back in line. Now.”

  “Please let me go,” I said. “I haven’t done anything—”

  The cop didn’t give me time to finish. He grabbed me by the sweater and threw me at the wall. I hit it hard and briefly saw stars. “I said back in line!”

  “You got a problem, Stew?” another cop called from further down the line of the unluckiest people in Edmonton. My ears perked up at the name. Could this be Stewart, the drug officer Noreen had mentioned?

  Stew leaned in on me. Hard. “No,” he replied. “No problem here.”

  He put his face next to mine, and I could smell his coffee breath. “I don’t have a problem, do I?”

  “No,” I grunted. He had me pinned to the wall so hard, I was having trouble catching my breath. “No problem at all.”

  “I didn’t think so,” the cop said, and walked to the next group of unfortunates.

  I really didn’t want to go to the police station, but I for one didn’t want to attract any more attention from that particular police officer. What the heck was I going to do?

  I glanced up and down the line of people hugging the wall. The cops were nearly finished going through pockets and harassing us. If I didn’t do something quick, I was going to be in the back of a paddy wagon or whatever, and I would definitely be late for our meeting with Honoria.

  “Back in line, sweetheart.” The cop named Stew had somehow snuck up behind me without me noticing. He pushed me back against the wall.

  I thought about saying, “I’m not your sweetheart,” for about a microsecond and decided against it. “Please let me go, sir,” I said instead. “I haven’t done anything wrong. Seriously.”

  Stew laughed. “Sorry, sweetheart. You’re going downtown with the rest of your friends. If you were just out for a stroll, like you say, downtown will work it out.” He leaned back in, crushing the breath from me. “Consider it a lesson, from me to you. So you remember to stay away from this particular park.”

  I closed my eyes and tried not to attract his attention any longer. Lesson learned, El Creepo. Lesson definitely learned.

  In no time at all, we were being loaded into a bunch of vehicles so they could haul us to the downtown police station and process us.

  As I was getting into the back of a van, I saw Stew yelling at another cop. He looked furious.

  “What do you mean he’s not here?” His face was a dangerous purple as he stood nose to nose with the unfortunate police officer who’d given him the bad news. “He was here. They said he was here!”

  I didn’t hear any more, because I was rather unceremoniously tossed into the rear of the van at that time, but I wondered, as I tried not to touch any of the great unwashed in the back, who they’d missed in their sweep.

  Someone important, if Stew’s purple face was any indication.

  Now, that was interesting.

  GETTING PROCESSED IS nothing I want to talk about. Ever. But after, we were allowed to make our phone call—well, I was, because I got really loud about it all—so I called James.

  What can I say? He wasn’t impressed.

  “You were just supposed to talk to people. Marie. Just talk.”

  “That’s all I did,” I protested. “I walked into the middle of a drug sweep. I think they thought they were going to catch someone important, but it looks like they missed him.” I shrugged. “Whatever. I just want out of here, and I really don’t want to wait until I’m arraigned. This wasn’t my fault, James.”

  “I know.” He snapped back to attention. “I think I can get you out. But it’ll mean we owe Sergeant Worth, big time.”

  “Is that the only way?” I whined. I really didn’t want to owe Sergeant Worth anything. Or anything more. She’d already saved my butt once, after all, and it was never good to owe the police too much. Besides, I was pretty sure she knew all about my mom and her ability to see ghosts. Worse, I think she suspected I had the same ability.

  “Yes,” he said. “I think it is.”

  “Are we going to miss our meeting with Honoria?” I personally saw the potential paycheque flying out the window, but he chuckled.

  “Don’t worry about the meeting,” he said. “I’ll call her and let her know we’re going to be late.”

  “Good,” I said. “Now, please, get me out of here. It really stinks.”

  Eddie:

  So, Who Is Jimmy Lavall,

  and Why Should I Care?

  I KINDA WONDERED if I could even go to that detective agency place. I’d been in some kind of weird loop since—well, since my death, I guess—that had me going from the tree where I died to my mom’s and back again. Didn’t want to be stuck like that forever. I needed something to change. Well, what I really needed was a quick fix to put my head back on straight. I was starting to hurt something fierce.

  I caught the LRT back downtown and got off near Chinatown.

  So far so good.

  I walked the few blocks it took to get to the address I’d seen on the business card. I’d made certain to remember it, didn’t need my spotty memory screwing this up for me. I needed to talk to Marie. She’d seen me—actually seen me. Only person so far. I had the feeling she knew something that might help me.

  THE OFFICE, WHEN I finally found it, was in a nothing kind of a building. Just a street-level door opening onto a set of stairs. No elevator or entryway or anything.

  Great. The only one who could see me, and she worked for a loser. Sounded like my kind of luck, still running the way it always did.

  I went up to the second floor. Dark, dingy, dirty. Yeah. Of course. Finally found the door. “Jimmy Lavall, Private Investigator” painted on the glass. Looked legit enough, so I pushed through and into the office proper.

  No one there. Luckily, light from the street flooded through the window at the far end of the office, so I could see well enough to have a look around.

  Small desk, sitting in the middle of the room. No computer. No nothing. And it was dark and empty. I thought private eyes worked all night and stuff.

  I took a look through both of the other doors in the room, hoping that the Marie chick was behind one or the other. One led to a closet, and the other one led to another office. The chick wasn’t in either one.

  There was a cot and a neat pile of men’s clothes in a suitcase in that second office. Somebody was living here. Man. These people were losers. And I needed their help. Help from lo
sers. Again. Batting a thousand.

  I was trying to decide whether to wait for the losers to come back or head to the park and figure out a way to get high, when the front door burst in, small bits of smashed-to-shit wood and glass flying everywhere.

  I ducked behind the desk—force of habit, what can I say—and heard a couple of guys walk through the hole that used to be the door.

  “What are we looking for?” one of them asked. My ears perked up at that voice. Man, I knew who it was.

  It was Crank. A two-bit hood who would do anything for a buck, and also somebody I called a friend. Sort of. Why the hell was he here?

  I glanced over the desk, saw who he was talking to, and shuddered. Full body shake. It was R. R for Rage. Or Ronald, or something. Ambrose Welch’s man. Big as fuck and twice as scary.

  “What the hell?” I breathed. When did Crank move so far up the food chain? He never got to hang around with people like R before.

  “I said, what are we looking for?” Crank asked again.

  R turned on him, and Crank flinched, which was a smart thing to do with R. I’d seen him kick a guy raw just for breathing wrong. That was a butt ugly thing to watch.

  “We need to find out what these people were really looking for,” R said. He held out a business card, and Crank squinted at it. So I did too.

  “Jimmy Lavall, Private Detective.” It looked like the card Marie had given my mother. Man, whoever this Jimmy guy was, he sure knew how to kick a hornet’s nest. Handing out business cards to Ambrose Welch’s crew? What was he, nuts?

  “Right,” Crank said. He glanced at the desk and frowned. “No computer.”

  “Check around,” R replied. “There has to be one somewhere.”

  He and Crank made short work of the room, then kicked in the two remaining doors. Guess they’d never heard of just turning the knob. I listened to them tear apart the inside office, tipping over file cabinets and the like.

  “Son of a bitch!” R cried, when the smashing stopped. They came back out soon enough, and R went through the desk again, more thoroughly this time.

  “There has to be something here,” he grunted, working his way through each drawer. He came up with nothing past pencils and paperclips.

  Then he grunted, sounding almost pleased, when he focused on the daytimer, still sitting on the desk. He flipped pages and then stopped, pointing.

  “Honoria Lowe,” he read, and turned to Crank. “Ever heard of her?”

  “No,” Crank said, staring at the page as though hoping he could somehow read more into the name than R could. “Who is she?”

  “How the hell would I know?” R said, instant anger tingeing his voice. “But they got a meeting with her, tonight. Somewhere.”

  He looked through the rest of the pages, slammed the book shut, and then, for good measure, swept everything off the desk. The coffee cup smashed, joining the paper and glass and wood that littered the floor.

  Then and only then did he look satisfied.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  “But Ambrose is expecting us to find something,” Crank said, looking all jittery and scared, which is his usual M.O. “We can’t go back with nothing.”

  “Did we find anything?” R asked.

  “No. Well, we got the name of that chick. Honoria whatever.”

  “Then that’s what we’ll take back to him.”

  “Do you think it will be enough?”

  R laughed. “If it isn’t, I’ll tell him it was your fault we couldn’t find more.”

  “R, you wouldn’t do that,” Crank gasped, the fear that lived just under his skin all the time oozing from him like sweat. He looked like he was going to piss himself until R cuffed him and turned to the wrecked door.

  “We got everything there is. If he wants us to come back and do more, we will.”

  He grabbed Crank and hauled him through the open doorway. A few moments later, I heard the downstairs door wheeze shut, and then I was alone again.

  I looked around at the train wreck that Crank and R had left and decided to leave, myself. Maybe this Marie chick could see me, but if she was stupid enough to bring Ambrose down on her, she wouldn’t have the time to figure out who killed me. She’d be trying to figure out who killed her.

  Marie:

  James Breaks In, and All Hell Breaks Loose

  “I CAN’T BELIEVE it took that long for the police to let me go.” I straggled morosely along beside James as we finally left the cop shop. It was nearly ten o’clock. We were an hour late for our meeting with Honoria Lowe.

  “That wasn’t long,” James said. “You’re lucky they didn’t hold you overnight.”

  “Even with Sergeant Worth’s help?”

  “Even with.” He pulled out his cell phone to call Honoria and let her know we were on our way. There was no answer, and he frowned.

  “Do you think she gave up on us?” I asked.

  “I called her before I came to get you. She knew we were going to be late. I wonder where she is?”

  He walked quickly, forcing me to occasionally do that awkward skip-step to keep pace with him. Damn men and their long legs!

  He’d parked on the street in front of the cop shop, and I was seriously glad to see the car there. My feet were starting to hurt. Terribly. The shoes I’d picked up at the Sally Ann when I was replacing my wardrobe were starting to pinch in all the bad spots, and all I wanted to do was take them off. I minced up to the car, and as soon as I was sitting in the passenger’s seat, I tore them off and rubbed furiously.

  “Your feet hurt?” James asked. Talk about stating the obvious.

  “I kind of wish I’d picked runners instead of shoes with heels,” I said.

  “So, why did you?”

  “Why did I what?”

  “Pick shoes with heels?” He put the car into gear and pulled into traffic. “I’ve never seen you wear heels before.”

  I looked down at the shoes, so I didn’t have to look at him. I’d picked the stupid shoes because I thought they made my legs look nice. But there was no way in the world I was telling him that. I just rubbed out the cramps and ignored the heck out of him.

  “Tell me what you found out,” he said, as he turned onto Jasper Avenue and headed west. “You did get to talk to some people before you were arrested. Didn’t you?”

  “A couple,” I said. “But they didn’t tell me anything. Wouldn’t even tell me if they knew Eddie.” I sighed. “I did talk to one of Eddie’s friends, but she said she didn’t think Eddie knew anybody named Honoria.” I shrugged. “Doesn’t mean Eddie doesn’t know her. Just means he didn’t tell Noreen.”

  “Noreen?” he asked. “Eddie’s friend?”

  “Yep.” I shrugged again. “Sorry. I didn’t get much.”

  It felt like I got nothing, to be honest, but James just took note, without any comment. I didn’t know what to make of that. He usually had a comment.

  We made it to 104th in excellent time and parked on the street next to the park. Being that close to the park again made me seriously twitchy and jumpy.

  “Can’t we park somewhere else?” I said, as I pulled my stupid shoes back on my feet and tried not to groan in pain. “I don’t want any of them to see me.”

  He didn’t argue. Just put the vehicle back into gear, pulled down the street, and around the corner.

  “Is this good?” he asked.

  I looked around and could see no one I recognized. “I think so,” I said, and we got out of the car and walked back to Honoria’s apartment door.

  I kept James between me and the park side, feeling ever so happy that I could use him to hide me from whoever was in the park. It looked pretty empty, but that didn’t mean there was no one there. It just meant I couldn’t see them.

  As James studied the bank of names below the intercom, I pulled off the shoe that was pinching the worst and rubbed my poor poor toes, one last time.

  “Let’s get you some sneakers tomorrow,” he said. “Heels really aren’t your sty
le, are they?”

  “All right,” I replied, trying to keep the anger out of my voice. “Fine. But you don’t need to act like that.”

  “Like what?” he asked. He pressed a button a third of the way down the list of names.

  “Like a smart ass,” I said. I stretched my toes and sighed.

  “I’m not,” he said. Then he grinned. “Well, maybe. Just a bit.”

  “Yeah, you were,” I said, ramming the shoe back on, and trying to ignore my screeching toes. Then I frowned. “Why isn’t she answering?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you push the right button?”

  “Yes!”

  He gave me a look that told me not to be a smart ass, and I shrugged. Two can play that game. He pressed the right button on the intercom—even I could see he’d chosen the right one—again.

  It crackled to life, and a man’s voice answered. It didn’t sound happy. “Yeah?”

  “I’m looking for Honoria Lowe,” James said.

  “You got Joey,” the man wheezed.

  “Is this Honoria Lowe’s apartment?”

  “No!” The wheezing voice took on a peeved tone. “I told you, you got Joey.”

  James shook his head. “Can you tell me—”

  “Screw this,” the guy said, and then surprised us both by unlocking the front door.

  “Good enough,” James said, and pulled it open.

  I personally didn’t think it was so good. Anybody could get in. Anybody at all.

  We walked through the front foyer, and James headed for the stairs. I followed, trying not to groan about my feet.

  On the second floor, we found her door, and James knocked. No answer. Knocked again.

  “Maybe she’s out,” I said, not very helpfully.

  James growled, pulled his cell out, and dialed her number. After a moment, a cell phone rang inside the apartment.

  James frowned. “She didn’t take her cell.”

  “Nobody leaves their cell,” I replied, and felt a flutter of nerves.