“I don’t understand why I’m getting it now. People who are psychic say they’ve known it all their lives. I’ve had a few experiences that made me think that maybe I had some extra-sensitivity, but nothing like this.” The color flowed back into her soft, ivory cheeks as she talked.
“Could be Jimmy Daniel’s murder triggered it.”
“Could be,” she agreed. “Jimmy Daniel’s calling card. Which makes me worried that. . .” She went quiet as if the murderer had snatched her tongue. “That someone else has been murdered. I feel it. No, I know it.”
“A third murder?” Hunter’s gut twisted. “Your imagination could be working overtime.” He ran a finger down her right cheek. She had the softest skin. “Let me take care of you tonight.”
She raised a brow.
“No, I’m not making a move on you, though we both know I want to. I’m here to protect you. You need to sleep.”
“Don’t you have patrols?”
“I’ve done mine. I don’t have to go out again until dawn.”
She nodded her head. “I’ll get some bedding.”
After she handed him a pillow, sheets and a blanket, Maggy kissed him on his cheek and climbed up to her loft. His eyes followed her rear all the way up.
***
Maggy couldn’t sleep, so she decided to phone Joe. Just to make sure that he and Clarence were doing okay. Just to be sure.
“Joe?”
“Love the sound of your voice, Maggy. Sweet and thick like honey. Sexy as hell.”
“How ya doing, you old goat?”
“All’s fine at The Black Cat. “Don’t you worry.”
Like hell. “Clarence okay?”
“Why wouldn’t he be?”
“Joe, humor me.”
“I like to keep the ladies happy.” His smooth voice and typical comments calmed her nerves like warm water in a bubble bath.
“Any of them tell you that you’re lethal?”
“A few.” He laughed his bawdy laugh.
“Good night, Joe.”
“What are you wearing?”
“Shut-up Joe.” She clicked her cell off.
Rain beat steadily on her metal roof. The place smelled of cinnamon and nutmeg from the tea Mei had brewed. Hunter lay stretched out on her sofa. His long muscular body hers for the asking, but she couldn’t think about that now. She nestled under her quilt. The last thing she thought before falling asleep was how good Hunter smelled, like salt and sea and freedom.
***
How long had her cell been ringing. It felt like hours, but no matter how much she ignored it, it kept going. She rolled over towards her bedside table and snatched it. “Hello.”
“Maggy Malone?” It was Peterson’s unmistakable gravel voice.
Hell. “Yeah.”
“We need to talk.”
“It’s . . .” She looked at her clock, “Three-thirty in the friggin morning. I need sleep. I’m exhausted . . .”
“He’s dead,” Peterson interjected.
She stopped breathing.
“Clarence is dead.” She dropped her cell phone. A shudder ran through her body and she began to tremble. Shit. Shit. Shit.
She forced herself to pick the cell back up. “How?”
“You have some explaining to do.”
33
One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain. Bob Marley
Logan flipped the cap off another bottle of a beer and handed it to his red-eyed father, who sat opposite him at the kitchen table. “Jimmy was too young to die,” he said. “Guess it’s true what they say: the good ones die young, eh?” How many beers had they drunk? What did it matter? Jimmy was dead. Gone forever. That’s all that he could think about. Jimmy—murdered in an alley. He’d never see him again. “He was always getting into trouble,” his dad continued. A glint of light passed through his eyes, ringed with darkness. “Always pushing the limits.”
“I figured you and Mom laughed about his escapades when we weren’t around.” It was getting harder to articulate consonants. Must be the brew.
His father nodded. “Oh yeah. We laughed about you boys a lot. Remember the time Jimmy threw a paper airplane at Mrs. Riddley’s fat ass as she wrote algebra equations on the board?”
“I remember.” He snorted and wiped his mouth. “The whole school laughed when they heard.”
A tear trickled down his father’s right cheek. “The whole time . . .” He sniffed. “The whole time we sat in the principal’s office your mother squeezed my knee.” Tears streamed down both sides of his weathered face. “She squeezed me hard, so I wouldn’t laugh. But when we got home we both roared. That Jimmy. He always made me smile.” He swatted at his tears.
Logan’s gut clenched, but he smiled at the memory. “Not Mrs. Riddley, so much.”
His father took a deep breath. “Ah. He charmed her with a rose he picked out of the neighbor’s yard. Jimmy told us, he didn’t’ like the way she made some kids feel stupid, but it wasn’t her fault she had a fat ass. At the end of the term he got an A in the course and they respected each other. At least that was Jimmy’s story.”
“Jimmy.”
“Remember the time,” continued his father, “he stole a young girl’s training bra from her locker and . . .”
Logan’s phone rang. He looked at the call display. “Excuse me Dad. It’s the cops. They could know something about the murder.”
His father nodded.
Logan got up and moved a couple yards away to be polite. “Yes,” he said into the phone, trying to keep all expectation out of his voice.
“Peterson here.”
“Yes.”
“There’s been another murder.”
The cop mumbled on, but his words didn’t register too well. Another murder? Logan couldn’t let it go on. He had to find out who was behind it all, before anyone else got hurt . . . before Maggy got hurt. Maggy? The image of her soft green eyes and mane of blond, wavy hair flashed at him. “I’ll be right down,” he said, interrupting whatever it was that Peterson was explaining about the media coverage.
“That’s not really necessary,” Peterson said.
Logan clicked the off button. It was necessary to him.
34
I think often sadness is a great place to get songs from. Sarah McLachlan
Maggy exhaled slowly and told herself not to say something stupid. Or scream it. Did Hunter really need to call Logan a “fucking prick?”
Sitting between Hunter and Logan in the cop shop was worse than wearing pantyhose. No room to breathe and painful. The men glared back and forth at each other with laser beam intensity.
The building looked efficient, with counters, computers and uniforms, but it smelled of dusty papers not filed and stale coffee not finished. Her stomach felt like a cauldron of acid soup.
Snarled words almost below the audible level, passed between the men. She clenched her teeth. Bad enough being called down to the police station, without having two men acting like hormonal teenagers sitting on either side of her. In some ways life would be so much easier without men. In some ways.
But in other ways? Only two days ago she’d lamented that her life had no action, and here she sat between two outrageously handsome men who cared about her. When she was a teenager she thought of herself as chubby, freckle-faced and boring. Her sense of self-worth had improved over the years, but she had never imagined having this much male attention. If she wasn’t such an emotional mess she might enjoy it, at least the irony of it. But her tears wouldn’t stop. Hunter handed her another Kleenex.
Clarence. Hard to believe the cantankerous, old blues man had passed on, and not gently. Her stomach hardened into a knot. She had actually considered that Clarence was the murderer.
The hands of the clock turned slowly. She’d been waiting ten minutes so far, but it felt like an hour. She pulled out her cell and sent a second text to Mei. The evil that was afoot moved fast, and she had no intention of being its next victim, o
r letting anyone she cared about be the next victim. There had to be some way to get ahead of it, anticipate it.
Only a few days ago her life had been simple. She focused on her music and caring for the people she loved. Then she tripped over a corpse and kept tripping. Was the universe trying to tell her something?
Hunter massaged her neck with his strong fingers. Logan held her hand and with that simple gesture made her feel wrapped in their . . . well, whatever it was they shared that was growing faster than a Canadian thistle, and was just as prickly. Would Peterson ever show up?
Finally the inspector appeared, in jeans, sweater and expensive Italian shoes. She looked him in the eye and opened her mouth, but closed it catching his cold stare. He waved them to follow him and he walked down a hallway to his office. The three took seats, Maggy sat in the middle.
Peterson sat in his chair behind a messy desk and straightened his back. “First of all, you need to listen to me.” His a no-nonsense cop tone grated her ears.
The only sound she heard was the institution clock ticking on his wall.
“Clarence B. Snyder was found by his cousin Joe in the alley. He had a silver marlin in his heart, just like the other two. Again, no fingerprints.”
“Uh,” she began, but he put his hand up to stop her from speaking.
“It wasn’t pretty,” he added, looking her square in the eye. “A lot of blood.”
More blood. Even though she was sitting, Maggy felt her knees giving out on her.
“We think he was murdered around midnight. The medical rxaminer will be able to give us an exact time soon.” He let his words sit in the silent room a minute, and then added, “For the record, I’d like to know where all of you were at that time.”
Hunter started. “I was at a community meeting at Smokey’s until midnight. Lots of people saw me there. Then I went directly to Maggy’s and was there until you called.”
Logan sent a killing glare towards Hunter.
“Logan?” Peterson asked.
Logan shifted his eyes back to the inspector. “I was with my father at my apartment. You can check with him.”
“We will.” Peterson turned his focus to Maggy.
She sniffed. Peterson pushed a tissue box on his desk towards her. “I met with Clarence earlier tonight. Then I went to the dock meeting and soon after I got home Mei and then Hunter joined me.”
“I’ll write up your statements and you can sign them in the morning.” Peterson sounded tired but, as always, efficient. He looked at the men. “You guys can go. I want to talk to Maggy.”
The men looked at each other and then Peterson. Hunter gave his fuck-you shrug and kissed Maggy gently on the top of her head. “I’ll wait outside for you,” he said as his lips brushed her hair.
Logan grumbled, and then took his turn kissing the top of her head. “We need to talk,” he said.
Maggy fought with her body’s determination to cry in front of the cop. She took a tissue and blew her nose. Clarence had been the first person to take her seriously as a musician. Cantankerous as a butler in hell, but also sweet as sugar, he’d opened a door for her in the business. She waved the men away. “I’ll get myself home. You guys can . . . just go.”
After the door closed behind them, Peterson’s eyes bored into hers. “Maggy, what’s going on?”
Part of her wanted to connect with him, but his eyes were so coppish, she reared away. What could she tell him? What would he understand?
“Something you want to tell me?”
“I,” she started, but then the tears welled up again. She used all her resolve to stop them. “I wish I had information for you, but I don’t. I don’t know who the murderer is.” She pulled her recycled envelopes from her purse. “Look,” she said, handing her garbage over to him.
His eyes widened when she dumped her recycled garbage on his desk, but they became focused as he realized what they contained. He studied each one, hemming and hawing as he read.
“I have lots of questions, but no answers,” she said.
“You really think the murders are linked to Brother XII’s gold?” He leaned back in his chair and looked into the air as if the answer rested there between them.
“Directly and indirectly, yes.”
“Tell me how.”
“Why?” she asked.
“I don’t understand your question,” he said.
“Why do you want my opinion on the murders? Surely your men can tell you more from the evidence.”
“Because you are the one living link to all three murders, so that tells me you must know something. Maybe, you don’t know you know something, but you do. So I’m asking you, what do you think is going on?”
“I think it all started with Brother XII. He ripped people off, turned their money into gold and hid it.” The tears had stopped, and her breathing eased.
“Got it. Go on.”
“He had many lovers and one of them, a woman named Rita Whitley, kept a detailed diary of their time together. Her granddaughter passed away recently and left Edgar her estate. The diary was among her things and Edgar read it carefully. He decided that she knew where the famous treasure was buried, last.”
“Last?”
“Brother XII trusted no one. He kept burying his gold, then digging it up and burying it somewhere else. He buried it all over Decourcy Island and Valdes Island.”
“I see,” Peterson said, but he looked perplexed.
Maggy tossed her hair out of her face and cleared her throat, wishing the lump would disappear. “Edgar had a clue, or maybe a bunch of clues, as to where the cult leader buried it, but he needed more information. One of the key clues was a description of a geographical area Edgar couldn’t locate, so he hired Jimmy Daniels to find it. Jimmy was a respected investigator who knew how to keep his mouth shut, and a sailor with knowledge of the coast. Edgar figured he was the perfect person to help him.”
“And they found it?”
“No. There’s more to it. Edgar grew impatient waiting for Jimmy to come up with something and hired a second person to help him look. That’s the Decourcy Island fisherman I mentioned to you before. That fisherman turned out to be greedy and dangerous. His threats scared Edgar, and he worried about Jimmy’s safety.”
“Jimmy’s safety?”
“Yeah. You see, he’d told the fisherman two things: first the clue that he was hunting down and second that Jimmy Daniels was also looking for the area.”
“So Jimmy knew someone might be after him.”
“Edgar warned him. But , according to Edgar, he didn’t take the warning seriously. “I think the fisherman caught up with him in the alley and killed him.”
“Okay,” said Peterson tapping his pen on his desk. “Who killed Edgar?”
“My guess—the fisherman.”
“And Clarence?”
“The fisherman.” As she said the words she became more certain. “I thought Clarence might have been the killer, but changed my mind after I had a long talk with him. He told me he was in the alley that night. I think the murderer saw him and that’s why he’s dead. I sent you a text that he was in danger.”
“Yes, I got the text, but I didn’t really understand.”
“I’ve told you all I know.” Her muscles quivered as she raised her chin. Was it a need to be listened to and respected, or a need to get some sleep? Too washed out to know her own motivations any longer, she shrugged in defeat.
Peterson watched her. “Thank you for being honest,” he said. “I find it hard to believe that a legendary treasure buried a hundred years ago could be the cause of three deaths, but I’ve seen people killed for much less. What worries me . . . “ He paused and leaned forward. “Is that you may be next.”
Maggy nodded. Beads of sweat formed on her upper lip.
“I don’t know if it was the fisherman or some mysterious stranger we haven’t identified yet, or for that matter one of your boyfriends, but I’m a pattern person, and the way this pattern reads—you�
�re next. You’re the only one who was in the alley that night that’s still walking.”
She took a deep breath.
“I repeat what I said earlier. You may know something. It may come to you later. Call me if it does, and keep safe. Trust no one.”
She released her breath slowly. What else could she know?
“There’s something eerie about this whole case.” Peterson leaned back with an angry expression.
“Eerie?” she asked, finding her voice.
“Yeah, eerie, like the Twilight Zone music should be playing in the background. Like Madame Zee with her whip might appear around a corner, or Brother XII with his ancient texts of wisdom.”
She smiled. Someone had been doing his research.
“Eerie, hokey, bull shit. I hate it,” said Peterson.
Her smile widened. “Have you found Edgar’s grandmother’s journal yet?”
“No. We’ve looked through all his things, but no journal about a cult or Brother XII has been found. Mostly, her journals talk about tea parties. Maybe Edgar was delusional.”
“Oh there was a journal,” she said wondering why she felt so sure. “It started this whole mess.”
“Uh, no. If we want to go spooky-stuff, it started with Brother XII.” His sarcastic grin punctuated his sentence.
“Can I look?”
“Not a chance. But I’ll let you know if anything turns up.”
Her eyes pleaded.
“No. We have professionals going over everything. There’s procedure we . . . “
Maggy interrupted him. “Uh huh.” Procedure, friggen police procedure. She’d heard enough about that for a lifetime. She needed Rita’s journal.
“Ah, get out of here,” he said. “And don’t leave town.” He stared out the window. “Part of me thinks I should put a patrol car on you, but we’re always short of officers and you seem to have your own baseball team out there.” He smiled.
Maggy turned at his door to stare back at him. What was he doing? He’d just finished warning her that she could be in danger and now he was demanding she stick around like a sheriff in a bad spaghetti western. He wasn’t. Nah. He couldn’t seriously be . . . “Do you think I’m the murderer?”
Black Cat Blues Page 15