Nick led the way and I kept a half-step behind. He knocked on the door. “It’s Nick and Holly.”
I craned around, taking in a panoramic view of the quiet neighborhood. The other houses were dark, the occupants sleeping, with only their porch lights on to illuminate the shapes. A stray cat crossed the road, not bothering to look both ways, and I realized it must be a quiet neighborhood during the day as well given his nonchalant manner.
The front door creaked open, and I turned back around just as Jess came to the door, her eyes bloodshot and red. She’d been crying. Her hair was tangled and fell limp around her narrow shoulders, as though she’d been tearing her hands through it as she went from room to room, surveying the destruction.
“Jess? Are you okay?” I ventured, knowing that there was no way she could be. It just seemed like the right thing to ask. Or maybe the only thing.
She gulped and pushed open the screen door. “Come in. I’ll explain.”
Nick stepped inside and I followed. Jess shut and bolted the door as soon as we were inside the small living space. As she crossed back through, she stopped to peer between the thin grey curtains covering the front window. I barely concealed a gasp as I looked around the living room. The couches had been shoved away from the walls, the cushions ripped up and piled on the floor. An entertainment center had been ransacked, the drawers all pulled out, the contents of each in a jumbled heap on the floor. A bookshelf sitting at an angle in the corner had also been disturbed, random books removed, lying open on the floor beside it.
From the living room, I could see into the open kitchen and dining nook. The kitchen had received the same treatment as the living room, and I didn’t have a doubt that the two bedrooms and bathroom were in the same condition. It was a small house, but it was going to take hours, if not days, to get everything right again. And even when all the belongings were back in their places, I had a feeling Jess would be straightening and adjusting things for weeks to come. It still wouldn’t feel right.
Jess tugged the curtains closed and swiveled around. She started to gesture for the couch but then, as if seeing it for the first time, realized there weren’t places to sit and she started to cry all over again. Nick jumped into action, grabbing cushions and putting them back in order as best as he could. I went to Jess and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. She sagged against me and her sobs wracked her entire body.
“It’s all right, Jess. We’re here to help and we’ll figure out who did this.”
She sucked in a few rapid breaths. “I—I—already know!”
“You do?” Nick said, whirling around, a large, brown couch cushion clutched to his chest.
Jess gave a miserable nod.
I went to the entertainment center and picked up a small tissue box from the floor. I handed it to Jess and she thanked me before grabbing a wad of tissues and pressing it to her eyes. “You know who broke in?” I glanced around, suddenly wondering how the perpetrator had gotten inside. The front door was solid and didn’t look like it had been damaged. None of the windows on the front were broken. Jess had mentioned a back door. Maybe that was how he’d gotten inside.
“It was Bobby. Katerina’s ex-boyfriend.”
Nick set the last cushion in place and motioned for us to each take a seat. “You’re sure, Jess?”
I took the spot beside Nick on the couch so we could both face Katerina as she perched herself on the edge of the recliner, her posture like a bird ready for flight. “Like I said on the phone, there’s something you don’t know, that might be part of the reason why Katerina…well, why she’s no longer here.”
I wanted to glance at Nick and see his reaction but I kept my eyes fixed on Jess. She mashed the makeup covered tissues between her hands. “Are you saying that you know for sure that Bobby is the one who killed her?”
Jess had already made her opinion clear when we’d question her at the tavern, but now it was more than a suspicion. Another crime had been committed and she was convinced it pointed back to the same man.
“This is going to sound awful—”
Nick held his hands up, palms facing her. “No judgments from us, Jess.”
Jess nodded. “Thank you. Um, this is really hard to say, but Katerina and I weren’t just working the bar at Lou’s. We had a side job, so to speak.”
I braced myself, not knowing where the rest of her confession was heading.
“Okay,” Nick prompted, lowering his hands.
Jess adjusted her position, getting more comfortable, though she still looked on edge. “Sometimes the patrons at Lou’s get out of control. Lou never cuts people off. He says as long as they’re paying, he’s pouring. Anyways, we don’t do it to the regulars, but since we’re close to the highway, we get a decent flow of tourists and out-of-towners. Katerina and I take turns walking people outside and putting them into cabs when they’re too far gone to drive. But…and this is the bad part…sometimes we take things from them.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
She blew out a long exhale. “Cash mostly, but sometimes a watch or necklace.”
I bit the insides of my cheeks to keep from gasping. Once again, my view of Katerina the ghost was completely twisted into a new mold to the person I’d learned she’d been in life.
“Did Lou know you were doing this?” Nick asked.
At his question, I was reminded of the confidential conversation with Sully, the security guy. He’d known that Katerina and Jess were getting into trouble. I still wasn’t sure if he knew what they were doing and hadn’t reported it to us, or if he had simply picked up on a bad vibe and figured they were stealing from a more obvious place, the tavern’s till.
“No one knew. It was just Katerina and me. It all started about six months ago. We were done for the night and Lou sent us out with this fancy businessman. He’d been hitting on both of us all night and we were over it. When he was getting into his cab, his watch slipped off his wrist. It must have been missing a link or something. Anyways, we pawned it and split the cash. He came back about a week later asking about it and we convinced him that he lost it in a pool game. He believed us.”
Nick folded his hands in his lap and I mirrored his posture. I didn’t want to offend Jess but it was hard not to show my revulsion at their theft. “So, back up a minute, how does this relate to what happened here tonight, or Bobby?”
Jess sucked in a breath and nodded. “Right. Well, Katerina never told Bobby about the extra money. I don’t know what she did with it, but she squirreled it away somewhere that he didn’t know about or wouldn’t think to look.” She paused and a small smile quirked at her lips. “Probably the washing machine or something to do with cleaning. That jerk would never think to look there. That’s why he had Katerina.”
I nibbled on my lower lip.
“But you think he found out after all?” Nick asked, taking the reins on the questions as I wrestled with my conflicted feelings about Katerina.
Jess nodded. “Lou and his guys packed her stuff up at Bobby’s the night she came to live with me. She never went back to get her stash. At least, not that I know of. What if Bobby found it and called her out? He would have been pissed that she was hiding all that money from him.”
“It’s possible,” Nick replied. “But that doesn’t explain why you think he broke in here?”
Jess scoffed. “He was probably looking for more! If he found out about our secret, he might have come here looking for more.”
“So, you think it was Bobby? You didn’t see the man leaving?” Nick asked in a fact-of-the-matter way.
Jess shook her head. “I didn’t see his face. No. But the man leaving was broad and tall just like Bobby and wearing a black t-shirt.”
Nick noted the information in his cell phone. The silence was thick as I watched him type, not wanting to meet Jess’s eyes. When he looked up, he offered Jess a smile. “I’ll see what I can do with that information. Was there anything that Katerina would have had in her possession? Somet
hing that hadn’t been sold yet? If I find it at Bobby’s house, it could be a link to him.”
Jess nodded. “She had three watches that we hadn’t pawned yet. I was looking for a place to sell them online. They could still be at Bobby’s. There were two gold ones and a silver one.” She paused and chewed her fingernails for a moment. “Oh! The silver one had initials engraved in the back. B. D. H. Does that help?”
Nick tapped it into his notes as he nodded. “Yeah, that’s great.”
“Okay.” Jess smiled, obviously happy to have helped.
When Nick finished, he shut off his phone, and met Jess’s eyes again, this time his face stern. “You need to go and stay somewhere else tonight. Better yet, a place to stay for a couple of weeks until we can get this thing solved. And, it goes without saying, that I won’t tell the police what you told us in regards to the thefts, but I would advise you stop.”
Jess gave a solemn nod. “Understood.”
“I’ll call Chief Lincoln and have him get a team out here to dust for prints and take your statement. After that, I suggest you pack a bag and call a friend.”
“Okay, Nick. I will. Thank you both.”
Nick stood up and went into the other room to call in the break in to the BHPD.
Jess gave me a watery smile. “He’s a really good guy, isn’t he?”
I nodded, a familiar fluttering shooting through my chest. “He really is.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHIEF LINCOLN and two deputies arrived minutes after Nick’s phone call and took over the scene. We waved to Jess on our way out and when I stopped at the passenger side door of Nick’s car, I spotted her pacing back and forth in front of the living room window, on the phone, hopefully with someone who could offer her safe shelter until the person who had ransacked her house—and potentially killed her best friend—was behind bars.
“You think she’s going to be okay?” I asked Nick, sliding into the passenger seat once he hit the unlock button.
Nick didn’t answer at first, he was watching Jess pace. After a moment, he turned to face me and tried to smile as he replied, “I’m sure she will be.”
I didn’t believe him, and judging from how quickly he looked away to start the car, he knew it.
I sighed as I relaxed back against the seat. The muscles between my shoulder blades were tensed and knotted. The entire time we were speaking with Jess, I’d been on high alert, waiting for something to happen. “We have to figure this out, Nick.”
“I know.”
He went straight instead of taking a right at the intersection and I shot him a puzzled glance. “What, you need a gallon of milk or something?” I asked, thinking of the all-night mini mart down the way.
Nick didn’t even crack a smile. “I think we should go pay Bobby another visit.”
I bolted upright in my seat as my mouth dropped open. “Are you crazy?”
Nick didn’t answer.
“Nick, seriously, we can’t just go in there and ask if he broke into Jess’s house. If he gets angry, neither of us could take him.”
Well, at least not without access to my magic. If push came to shove, I’d blast him with some kind of stunning spell, rescue the both of us, and then plead with my SPA agent, Harvey Colepepper, to arrange the memory to be scrubbed from Nick’s mind. And that sounded like a lot of paperwork.
I tugged on his arm. “Nick, we can’t—”
“The police can’t go search his place based on nothing but a hunch from his ex-girlfriend’s friend’s gut feeling. We—on the other hand—can go look around.”
I folded my arms. There was no point in arguing with him. He had his mind made up, and if I knew anything about Nick Rivers, it was that he was just about as stubborn as me. “And what exactly do you think you’re going to find before he throws us out onto the driveway?”
Nick sighed and took a hand from the wheel to rake through his unruly hair. “I don’t know, Holly. But he’s the closest thing we have to a lead right now. We have to try.”
I didn’t object—at least not out loud—but I kept my arms crossed tightly in case he had any doubts on my feelings about his plan.
Within a few minutes, we were pulling up the long driveway to Bobby’s house. The lights were on in the front room and I wished they weren’t. Maybe if Nick thought he was sleeping, he would turn around and we could go back to the safety of town.
Nick killed the engine and glanced over at me, the keys jangling in his hand. He was nervous too. “You wanna stay here?”
I smiled. “And let you get your butt kicked all by yourself? Not a chance, Rivers.”
He chuckled. “Good. I think if either of us has a chance of finding this guy’s Achilles heel, it’ll be you.”
“I’m not gonna bat my eyes at him if that’s what you’re thinking.”
We walked up the drive and Nick knocked three times. Bobby pulled the door open and groaned. “You two again? Listen, like I told you the other night, I don’t know what happened to Katerina. Now get off my front porch before I call the cops.”
Nick plastered on a serene smile. “Oh, they’re a little busy right now. Investigating the break-in over at Jess’s place. You did quite a number on the place.”
“What the heck are you talking about?” Bobby growled.
I flicked a sideways glance at Nick, silently questioning his strategy. Did he not see the size of Bobby’s fists?
Nick pocketed his hands. Mr. Casual. “Yeah, Jess told us she saw you sneaking out the back door.”
Bobby let out a colorful string of expletives. None of them flattering about Jess.
“Hey, I’m willing to hear you out,” Nick said, holding his hands up. “You wanna let us in?”
Bobby frowned but after a moment, he stepped back and let Nick and me into the house. The place looked just as it had on our last visit. After taking a quick glance around the room, my gaze fell to Bobby’s wrist. He was wearing an expensive looking gold watch, similar to the one Jess had described for us, and I sucked in a sharp breath.
“If you weren’t the one she saw tonight, then why would she say it was you?” Nick asked before I could comment on the timepiece.
Bobby turned to make his way to the couch and I took the opportunity to nudge Nick and direct his gaze to the watch. He nodded just as Bobby spun back around and flopped onto the couch. “Because she’s got a beef with me. She thinks I mistreated Katerina.”
Nick gave a sage nod. “Aha. So she’s trying to set you up for a robbery?”
Bobby gave a hollow laugh and heaved his broad shoulders. “Seems like it.”
Nick sat on the edge of the couch and I followed his lead, putting a few inches between us. He leaned forward and as his elbows went to rest on his knees, he steepled his hands together and considered Bobby. “Who do you think would break into Jess’s house?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care.”
“Where’d you get the watch?” Nick asked, looking at Bobby’s wrist.
Bobby glanced down at his own arm. As though forgetting he had it on. He set his jaw and unclasped it. Once freed from his wrist, he unceremoniously tossed it onto the coffee table. “It was a gift.”
“From whom?” I asked, trying to keep my tone light and conversational. Bobby was already on the edge.
Bobby frowned. “From Katerina.”
Nick’s eyebrows shot up. “Looks nice. She must have done pretty well at that bar she worked at.”
“I guess.”
There was no way of knowing if it was one of the stolen ones that Jess had mentioned but it also seemed a little too coincidental to not be.
“When did she give it to you?” Nick pressed.
Bobby let out a long, impatient sigh. “Listen, I think we’re done here. I didn’t break into Jess’s place, just like I didn’t kill Katerina. All right? I’ve been here all night, minding my own business. It’s my one day off from working on the property, and I tend to catch up on sleep and unload my DVR. I wasn’t out
terrorizing Jess and I can’t help you figure out who did even if I cared enough to try. But you tell that girl she better watch who she’s pointing fingers at.”
Neither of us asked what would happen if Jess didn’t heed his advice. Nick pushed up from the couch. “You were here all night, huh?”
Bobby nodded, a hostile expression taking hold once again. “You wanna go check the trash for the pizza box?”
Nick shook his head. “No, but if you know the delivery man’s name, we could check with him. If he was here at the time of the robbery, that would be a pretty good alibi.”
Bobby’s lip curled in on itself. He pushed off the couch, towering over us. “I don’t need an alibi. You’re not even a real cop. Now get out of my house before I go ahead and call the real cops and file a harassment charge against both of you!”
I backed up to the door, nearly stumbling over the folded edge of the large area rug. I kicked it back into place and then wondered why it was peeled back to begin with. Was there a compartment underneath one of the floor boards?
I shook my head. Slow down there, Holl. Getting a little paranoid.
Nick and I left the small house and hurried back to his car, the entire thing playing out like a scary case of déjà vu. Bobby didn’t watch us at the window this time but the lights flickered off as we backed down the driveway.
“Well, that didn’t help,” I said as soon as we were back on the main road.
“Not every interview is a gold mine, Holly. This is a marathon, not a sprint,” Nick replied, his tone even and cool. Unruffled.
A flare of pain radiated through the back of my head as a tension headache threatened to take hold. I was hungry, exhausted, and drained. I wasn’t in a mood for cool, adult, everything-will-be-fine Nick. I wanted him fired up and tenacious. I blew out a puff of air and started massaging my neck. “Well, we need to pick up the pace before Jess gets hurt. Or worse.”
He didn’t argue.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
BY SOME MIRACLE, I had the next day off from work. Boots and I slept in until nearly ten before I finally mustered the will to get up and start my day. I needed to go to Siren’s Song in order to deliver potions to a few customers who would be stopping by. Posy was tight with the SPA and even though I knew she liked having me around the manor, she was also a by the book kind of ghost who wouldn’t hesitate to tip them off to my side business if she knew the volume I was dealing in. As it was, she thought I simply made potions for friends as a favor.
Twice the Witch: A Beechwood Harbor Magic Mystery (Beechwood Harbor Magic Mysteries Book 2) Page 16