“Uh, okay, what’s his address?” I scribbled the details without taking my eyes off the candle.
“So, you don’t think I’m making a huge mistake?”
“It’s your life Anna, what I think doesn’t matter.” It was the closest I could get to approving of her wrecking everything she had. Apparently, it was good enough for the candle as the fire shrank down to normal size.
Anna kept talking, telling me about Aden, how he was the first fire witch in his family for generations and a host of other things but my eyes stayed locked on the candle. It didn’t surprise me at all when E knocked on my door a few seconds after the two of us said goodbye.
Her eyes were swirling red, a look that meant the fire goddess was about to use E as Her vessel. I hated that. Hated the way E didn’t get to be in charge of her own body.
“E? What’s up?” Yeah, it was a bit insulting to call Her E and not bow before Lady Raya, but I wasn’t Pagan. I didn’t really like the Pagan gods. And besides, the candle trick pissed me off.
“I want another Gigli fire witch.” The voice made up of popping of flame and the crackle of burning made my blood go cold. “Anna is twenty-nine; I’ve waited long enough.”
“Shouldn’t it be her call?”
“The Aden witches were strong. The two bloodlines together will have interesting results.”
“She’s not a horse. You can’t breed her.” Actually, She was a god. She could do whatever She wanted, but I didn’t have to like it. “You’re making Anna do this even though you have to know how much it’s going to ruin her life.”
“Her life is mine to mold as I will.”
“Well, fine then, mold it. Make her straight, make her breakup with Nancy, and fall in love with Aden. Because right now she’s miserable and that’s just cruel.”
“It is what it is. Until I have my Gigli-Aden witch whenever she’s fertile she’ll be driven to him.”
“Whenever she’s fertile?” I shouted. “How can you do this? What kind of a loving god plays with their followers like toys?”
“I never claimed to be a loving god.” Her voice, the unholy, cruel flame voice pronounced the words with a complete lack of emotion. Looking at my friend’s face, knowing E wouldn’t remember this conversation, that Raya had pulled her from whatever she was doing and used her to deliver this message I realized how true those words were.
She stepped toward me then around me to the mirror, smiling at her reflection. “If you tell Anna what I’ve told you, she’ll be delighted. If you tell Aden how I put him in that bar and made him want her, he’ll be surprised. Neither of them will be upset. You are the only one, little death witch, who thinks my plans are cruel.”
I gaped at her, at the way she uttered the words so calmly, her hand on my door knob, the conversation so clearly over for her.
“What about Nancy?” I let my voice sound as bitter as I felt.
“Who?”
“Anna’s live-in girlfriend, the woman she loves.” But my guest didn’t stick around to hear the answer; She was already out the door. Soon E would be back in her living room wondering what she’d done for the few minutes she’d lost. I felt a sudden burst of hatred for her god.
Chapter 12
Friday morning found the squad room dead quiet. The guy leaning on the desk across the walkway from mine seemed a bit dead too. I didn’t offer my opinion. Instead, I reviewed our notes on Christine and toyed with the idea of talking to someone in the representative’s office again.
Really, that’s what I was left with, going over old ground, hoping to turn over something new. Even the mayor’s televised plea hadn’t gotten us anything new. It felt like no one knew anything about how Christine disappeared on a Saturday morning nearly a month ago.
Danny came in looking more than happy, and dropped a series of full-color crayon masterpieces on my desk.
“From the hellions, they’re rather impressed their chemistry set was so important.”
“Uh-huh, so you didn’t tell them it was mostly your brain power that did it?” I asked, flipping through the crudely drawn tokens of love. In each I was depicted with brown wavy lines for hair, holding onto a test tube saving the day. If I could be half the woman Danny’s kids thought I was I’d be pretty amazing.
“Not just mine, it was your idea to go back to the boyfriend. Any other brilliant ideas?”
“What do you think of sending some uniforms to interview the neighbors in Rivermont?”
“Never gonna happen.”
“I was afraid of that. How about you ask me again after I get some coffee?” I held up my mug on my way to the break room. Danny nodded.
I found Lucas inside, tidying up the coffee mess. Now that I knew he preferred men, I could say it was stereotypical but I knew lots of straight men who cleaned so I banished the prejudiced thought away.
“Our boys made it to the big time; I’m having a party for the game. You wanna come?”
He hesitated. “How does your partner feel about that?”
“Danny? He’s more of a soccer fan actually, thinks it’s the real football.” I sniffed at Danny’s inability to grasp the most important game in the world as I filled my Saints mug with the nectar of the gods. Thick, black, rich coffee, the very scent of it making it easier to think, there was nothing better in the morning.
“I meant your other partner, the blond one.” Lucas rubbed his jaw softly and I got it.
“Oh! Yeah, we talked about it. You’re invited. Just don’t try anything.”
“I won’t, Scout’s honor.” He crossed his heart with one hand.
“Great, kick off at six, barbeque at half-time. If you’re picky about beer bring your own.” I went back to my coffee, adding a hint of cream and a tiny bit of sugar. My coffee tastes changed depending on my mood; this morning I wanted something strong.
“Uh, and Mors, about the other thing…”
“The other thing?” I asked not even remembering what the other thing was. More coffee would help. I took a long drink.
“We found another place for the full moon.”
“Good idea.” For me the night had been about the bear and the wolf, followed by the shower, and the kiss afterward that led to bloodshed. For Lucas, what mattered was how he might have been putting the other werewolves in danger. I filed that bit of his character away and headed back to my desk.
“Did your coffee give you the answers?” Danny asked.
“Sadly, no, not this time. You come up with anything?”
“Didn’t someone once say the definition of crazy is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a new result? I think maybe we need to go another way. What if this was totally random?”
“Then our chances of solving it are about nil.” I didn’t bother to keep the gloom out of my tone.
“Maybe not. We haven’t pulled her credit card reports yet, or her bank records.”
“You’re thinking someone forced her to withdraw money, then killed her in some bizarre witchcraft kind of way, and dumped her body in the river?”
“Yup.”
“Why go to all that trouble?”
“I have no idea, but it’s what I’ve got.”
“Well, let’s—”
“God to you.” It wasn’t the usual greeting we got in the SIU but then the barefoot teenager interrupting me was definitely unusual. The thin zoo t-shirt stretched across his broad chest barely meeting jeans that didn’t come close to fitting. His black hair lay wet and tousled on his head, but this time his thin lips formed an anxious frown not a sexy smirk. He held a badly wrapped wet bundle as if it were the most important thing in the world. As Danny predicted the young selkie from the zoo got out on his own but he didn’t look happy about it.
“God and Mary to you, Sean. Nice to see you,” Danny responded.
“Right, yeah. I’m ready to go, so I’ll be taking my ticket and my passport.”
“So soon?” I asked, not willing to give in to his haste.
; “Soon? It doesn’t feel like soon when you’ve spent days going back and forth and back and forth over the same thirty meters, eating the same food, and being on display every fecking hour.”
“I thought it was paradise,” Danny said.
“Na, more like a bloody hell. You do have my passport, don’t you?”
Danny sat silently so I decided to give a bit of dig. “What about the girl?”
“What about her? She’s English in the end, not worth the back and forth in tired water. I’m sick of being closed in, being caught. I want out. And a proper stew, I’ve had nothing but fish for too long,” he whined.
“Uh-huh.” Danny opened his desk drawer and took out the passport. “If you head to my place, Katie can help you with scheduling the flight or you could go to the airport and do it yourself.”
He snatched up the passport, fingering the heavy paper as if it were fine leather. “Some money, then? For a cab?”
I frowned, stunned he could be such a spoiled brat. Danny surprised me by taking out his wallet.
“Here, then.” He held out a piece of cardboard I recognized but Sean didn’t.
“What’s this?”
“Train pass. The house is a mile or two from the station. Have a nice walk.” Danny turned away from the boy’s pout and looked at me. “So pulling the credit reports?”
Sean stormed out in huff. I managed to keep my laughter in until the elevator door chimed shut in the hall.
“Your house is like five miles from the train station, maybe six. You didn’t even give him directions!”
“It’s an Irish mile, they don’t convert so well.” Danny’s grin filled his face and spilled over into his eyes.
“Uh-huh, and it’s still in the forties out. He doesn’t have any shoes.”
“Oh he’ll be fine, a little too fine if you ask me.”
****
The credit report forms were faxed, the bank report forms too, when a call took us away for a few hours. I had a lovely chat with a ghost, telling him even if he was sure it was still his house his widow had sold it and it was time to move on. Ghostbusting wasn’t an SIU job but the case gave us something to do while we waited for the faxes to come back.
By the time we made it back in they were both waiting neatly on my desk. I took the credit card report and handed Danny the bank report. I read with a sandwich from downstairs in my hand, not expecting anything exciting enough to deserve my full attention.
I was wrong. The credit card statement told me more about Christine’s life than both of her parents and her lover. Every expense went on the credit card, from her nearly daily lunches out to her personal trainer’s fees. She shopped at only one store and from the size and dates of her purchases I guessed she used a personal shopper.
I called Anna to get the scoop on the shopper and see if she could help us but ended up leaving a message. Whatever Anna was doing in Texas, she wasn’t picking up the phone. Diving back in, I found Christine didn’t like to cook; she got meals delivered once a week from a service. She didn’t seem to read or paint; no hobbies showed up except the personal shopper and Pilates sessions. Once a month she spent two hundred dollars at one of the best salons in the city.
We switched forms after a few minutes but the bank statements were a lot less satisfying. They told me almost nothing. The activity showed weekly cash withdrawals at an ATM for a goodly sum and two monthly payments, one to the mortgage and one to the credit card. We spent the afternoon with the reports, trying to see if there was more, something that might lead to a murder. Finally, we gave up and switched to trying to establish a pattern.
“Give me a random Saturday,” I decided.
“Okay, December—”
“Not December, that’s Christmas shopping, a more random Saturday,” I clarified.
“Okay a week before she died, how’s that?”
I nodded.
“Goes shopping and spends almost three hundred in the morning. She hits the ATM for cash from the bank and that’s all we’ve got. No details after that.”
“What about another Saturday?”
“Shopping in the morning, the ATM, and then the salon in the afternoon.”
“Another one?” I sorted through some of the pages in front of me.
“Shopping and the ATM.”
“So she has a Saturday routine?” I clutched at the glimmer of hope. A routine meant places where people would recognize her, where they might have seen something go wrong, might have suspected something.
“Looks like it. Three times a month it’s shopping and the ATM, once a month shopping, the ATM, and the salon.” Danny flipped through the pages getting excited.
“Where are those places? What ATM? The salon is downtown, right?”
“And the ATM is next to it, about two miles away from the mall on her way back to her house.”
“What? No, that can’t be right. She needs to stop by Rivermont or cut through there or something.” We checked the statements, and the map. Christine never went anywhere near Rivermont. She had a regular Saturday routine and it completely didn’t fit with where we’d found her car.
Still, it was a break. It gave me the chance to do some real detective work. I could start with the store, maybe find the personal shopper. Then head to the ATM see if there were any cameras around, hopefully with photos showing someone in the background. The public hadn’t given me something to go on but the forms had. I was almost sorry working last Saturday gave me this Saturday off. On the other hand, I’d have something to do on Monday to push away the post-Superbowl blues and that was a very good thing.
****
At home, I called Jakob and invited him over for dinner. Being the demure vampire he was, he declined but offered to make me his favorite meal: hot fresh bread, milk, and cheese. I swooned, professed my love, and begged him to be quick. He laughed and promised to try.
I spent some time on the apartment, looking at it with new eyes now that my case was going along so well. Cleaning brought me to the sample-size box of milk bones I’d gotten from Simon, a joke about my last Saturday’s work. I was debating what to do with it when the scent of hot bread hit me.
I flung the door open and snatched at the towel-wrapped loaf. Jakob wrapped his bread once in a damp cloth and then again in a dry one to keep it warm and soft for the drive over. It was perfect and I sat on the couch to indulge. No vegetables, no fruit, no healthy lean meats, for Jakob this was junk food. For me it was heaven.
“Work went well?” he asked as he watched me gulp down the steaming bread.
“Better than well, I might actually have a chance to solve the case.”
“Someone came forward?”
“No such luck, but I have a few leads for Monday. What about you? How was work last night?”
“The building for Bright Lady Fitness failed its first inspection; the owners want us to put the fees they owe us on hold until the opening happens.”
“Ohhhhh, why do I think you aren’t pleased with that?” Jakob’s firm took a risk investing in witches only, women only, fitness center. I thought it was a great idea but the project was going slowly. Missing the New Year’s Day opening caused Jakob no end of problems.
It seemed gyms made something like sixty percent of their profits in the first three months of the year. With the failed inspection, I suspected Bright Lady Fitness wouldn’t be open until after those three months.
“I’m not,” he agreed. “But it could be worse; they could be trapped in legal delays or some morass of red tape.”
I knew from his tone there was another project, something he hadn’t mentioned yet, stuck in those very delays. I thought about distracting him with sex. His Friday casual outfit included a burgundy button-down shirt. The open buttons at his neck reminded me of all the wonderful hidden places I could kiss him.
I stopped myself, though. Sometimes in a relationship it’s your job to listen, not act. I listened patiently, offered comfort in the right spots, and kissed him goodb
ye passionately at the door, reflecting on how thinking about living together thrilled me.
My phone rang and I hoped it was Phoebe so I could discuss all the ins and outs of it with her. The nasally voice on the other end told me I hoped in vain.
“Mallory, this is Nancy, Anna’s girl—”
“I remember you, what’s up?” I said it too fast. I didn’t care for Nancy at all.
“Well, Anna said she was going to a modeling thing but her agent doesn’t have her down for anything. Did she tell you about it?”
“Sorry, she didn’t mention anything.” I wasn’t really lying, after all Anna hadn’t mentioned the modeling gig because it didn’t exist. Of course, that didn’t stop me from feeling guilty. “Is everything okay? No emergencies, right?”
“No, it’s just…it’s kinda an anniversary for us and I wanted to tell her I loved her.”
“Oh.” I felt even worse. “What anniversary?” How long had they been together? Not long enough for an anniversary, right?
“Three-month anniversary of our first date, kinda crazy, huh? I gotta tell you I didn’t expect us to spend it apart. I was planning a dinner and flowers, maybe something special. Does she like teddy bears? You can get them personalized down at the mall, with t-shirts that say stuff. I was thinking ‘three months and forever’ but with the ‘three’ and the ‘four’ as numbers and the ‘and’ as a plus sign. What do you think?”
“Sounds great!” I was straight out lying this time but I didn’t feel guilt. Nancy’s overly cutesy need to celebrate everything made me want to puke. Hopefully, Anna would like it. I got off the phone as quickly as I could and dialed her cell. She didn’t answer but a few minutes later a breathless Anna called me back.
“Sorry I didn’t pick up. I was, uh, busy.” From the way she sounded I could guess what kind of busy she meant.
“Yeah, right, two things.” Would Anna want to know Raya was manipulating her? The goddess told me to tell her, which made me not want to. “And I’m not even sure I should tell you the second one.”
“Then don’t, I’ve got enough craziness going on inside my own head right now.”
Blood, Dirt, and Lies Page 17