“Try again?” Erin said.
“Don’t think my eyebrows could handle it.”
She giggled. “I should tell you, if you use an object to focus the spell, it can help you direct its effects and enhance them. Silver would be especially good. Like a silver pen or a letter opener. And if you feed the flame with power while you chant the word, you can really make an impressive attack. Some longer phrases will give the fire added life. It’s like singing a song. You can make your voice loud or soft, but you can also make the notes high or low. You can shape the sound to be constricted or open or rough or smooth. It’s like that. And the fire will react and behave differently as you bend it to your will. Some mages spend centuries perfecting their craft. That goes for all spellcasting. On the other hand, sometimes a huge flaming explosion is all you need to get the job done.”
I made no reply. I could see the stars coming out above us, everything in order, and I was content to just listen to her talk.
“Can I make an observation?” Erin’s voice was hesitant. “It’s not a criticism. I just notice you kind of fly by the seat of your pants. What we’re doing is necessary practice. But we’ll get to the point where we’ll have to make a plan. We can’t get ready for anything and everything. We’ll have to get ready for something specific. You’ll tell me when you find things out, right? I feel completely inadequate for the task as it is. So I need you to help me help you.”
She rolled on her side and propped her head on her hand so she could look at me. I looked back. I looked at her eyes and then down at her lips and then back to her eyes. I think she was as surprised as I was that we were this close. Then the moment passed.
“Sure,” I said.
Chapter Twenty-One
Evidence
Max tried to feed us a late dinner, but Erin said she wasn’t hungry and she needed to get up to do autopsies starting at five in the morning. I told her she worked too hard, and she touched my cheek before she left.
I didn’t want Max to feel bad, so I ate a plate of salmon and homemade scones. The meal wasn’t heavy—just right—and thoroughly delicious. I told Max and Sandretta that because we were in the mortal realm, I was making the choice to thank them and let them know I appreciated the things they did for me and especially for keeping the house safe.
If I hadn’t been thinking about my meeting in the morning at the golf course, I would have slept better. The conversation that hadn’t happened yet persisted and repeated in my dreams. Cuevas and MacPherson circled around me so I could never address them together. Each time the words were different. I struggled to find a safe path through a verbal minefield that was impossible to navigate. Each time, the conversation ended up with the whole golf course on fire.
I got up earlier than I would have liked, but there was no help for it after rough sleep. I showered and dressed in the best approximation I had for golf course wear. Some khaki slacks and a pale blue polo shirt and wingtip shoes.
It was only six o’clock when I drove over to the police station. I was supposed to meet Cuevas and MacPherson at ten o’clock, so I had almost four hours to kill.
Downstairs, the evidence room was being manned by a former jarhead—a Marine—who didn’t like me because I wasn’t sixty years old with a buzz cut and facing retirement in five long years.
“Good morning,” I said.
“What’s it to ya?” he replied.
I had my computer in a bag along with other stuff. I fished around in the bag for a second and placed a list of robbery reports filed by jewelry stores between two and five years ago on the desk. I put my private investigator I.D. on top. “I’d like to see if there are any surveillance videos for these incidents please.”
“There aren’t.”
I took a moment to nod and point at the papers.
“You want to take a second to look?”
“Not really.”
I nodded again. I took my phone out of my pocket and scrolled through my contacts. I turned the phone around and put it on top of the papers.
“Do you know Chief Cuevas’s cell phone number?”
“Nope.”
“Here it is. Chief Cuevas is probably eating breakfast now. He and I have a meeting at ten o’clock at the Palmetto Golf Club. Sometime between now and then, I’m sure he can come down here and sign out the evidence boxes that he asked me to review. Could mean he misses his tee time but I know he’s pretty patient when it comes to his day off.” I put the phone down next to his hand. “Push ‘call’ if you want to.”
Jarhead looked at me and shifted his jaw back and forth like he was chewing ten-penny nails. I gave him the most sincere and shucky-darn expression I could manage. “Look, I’m just glad Cuevas is giving me some work, you know. He has me doing a favor for his golf buddy. Lonnie MacPherson. Check if you want. I think Cuevas knows it’s a dead end, but it means a lot to his friend. Cuevas doesn’t want to waste the department’s resources on a wild goose chase, so it’s up to me to make a good show.”
Jarhead finished chewing. He picked the sheets of paper up and started back to the vault.
I was glad he didn’t push the button on my phone. He would have called my bank, which is closed on Sunday. Could have been an embarrassing moment when the call didn’t go to Cuevas. Underneath my breath, I said, “Poker night’s on Tuesday.”
Six minutes later, Jarhead came back with a couple of boxes and my sheets. “Lemme know if you don’t find what you’re looking for in these. There’s a couple more in the back.”
“Hey, I appreciate your help,” I said as I signed for the boxes. “This is really great of you.”
Stupe.
I hauled the boxes to an empty desk and laid everything out. The first box had a layer of dust on the lid. I pulled a file out of the box at random. Jewelry store. Three years ago. There was a pair of DVDs in the file. Wish I’d brought some popcorn.
The DVDs played out on my computer screen in accelerated fashion. The security system at the jewelry store shot a frame every three seconds and the people moved around like they were in a Charlie Chaplin movie.
I wasn’t analyzing every frame to catch somebody in the act. Mostly, I was just looking for people I recognized. While the DVD played, I skimmed the written report. The owner of the store stated that two necklaces and two rings were found missing after the store was closed on the day in question. From the corner of my eye, I could see when new people came into frame. Once or twice I paused the video or rewound to make sure I got a good look at a face.
Near the end of the report, there was a follow up. The owner of the jewelry shop had one employee who stopped showing up for work. The investigating officer noted that the theft was likely committed by the missing employee and the case was closed. I scanned through the rest of the security DVD anyway, which only took another few minutes on fast forward, pausing to examine new faces.
If nothing else, investigations required patience. I refused to be daunted. I reviewed six DVDs for more than two hours and failed to turn up anyone familiar. Yet I still maintained a full lack of daunt.
I wasn’t sure yet what I was going to tell Cuevas and MacPherson. It was possible I wouldn’t have a lot to say. I could almost see myself just walking up to MacPherson and punching him in the face and then walking away. It would be an accurate summary of what I suspected about him, his relationship with Amad, and what his association may have done to ruin his daughter’s life and end Barry Mallondyke.
Disc number seven had surprises.
The timestamp on the video was about eleven in the morning almost two years ago. The written report indicated that the store had lost a handful of loose diamonds that day. About fifty stones worth tens of thousands of dollars. Right at five minutes after the hour, Milly MacPherson—before she married—came into the store. She entered with a man. Milly was clearly framed in the security camera’s field of view. She
wore a business suit and silk blouse with oddly-matched accessories and carried an aluminum briefcase. Totally Milly. The man was either more aware of the cameras or just preferred to stay away from center stage and let Milly run the show. I couldn’t see his face.
Milly was greeted by a man with closely-trimmed silver hair and a pinstriped suit. They shook hands and walked out of frame. About twenty minutes went by. A customer came in and was served by a tall, well-dressed clerk. Then a couple came in, holding hands, and was fawned over by a woman in a flowing blouse with pearls around her neck. Finally, Milly and her escort came back out, hands were shaken, and they left.
As they moved toward the door, I saw a glimmer. And a reflection.
The display cases had tilted glass fronts, angled so that the shelves with the jewelry could be arranged in stair-step fashion to let customers easily browse the items on every shelf. There was one place where the shelf behind the class was covered in black velvet and no items were laid out on the display. The man’s face passed right across the spot, the overhead lights illuminating his features and for about two seconds. I rewound the DVD and went forward again, frame by frame. I repeated the process again and paused. The footage was in color, which made it easier to identify the red triangle of hair under his lower lip. It was Amad.
I watched the sequence again as they left the store. I didn’t catch Amad red-handed. Blue-handed? Not exactly. But for a moment, I was sure, his hand was blue. To most, it might have looked like a glint of light hitting the camera lens, as when the front door was opened, sending morning sun streaking off all the glass in the room and catching the lens with a sparkling shaft that just happened to overlap Amad’s hand. To me, it was clear: Amad was using magic.
* * *
As I drove to the golf course, I tried to figure out what kind of spell Amad had been using.
The morning had started out sunny, but now the sky was growing overcast and it could turn into a bad day for golfing—or having a conversation. I didn’t have enough information to really know what Amad had been doing. All I’d seen was a flash of his power. I had no idea where Amad had directed that spell or what he had done. Maybe it had been a spell that let him steal fifty diamonds. That’s what I suspected. I also felt that Milly didn’t have anything to do with the theft. Not consciously. She was being used. Exactly how her father factored into the whole thing was hard to say.
But I thought of a way to find out.
I parked at the Palmetto golf course and sauntered up to the entrance. I let the guy at the desk know I was here as a guest of Chief Cuevas and Mister MacPherson. He directed me to the practice greens. I spotted the two men through the windows, wearing polyester and superiority in equal measure.
I took a quick, deep breath before going out. It was precisely ten o’clock.
“Good morning,” I said.
“He’s on time at least,” MacPherson muttered. He didn’t offer his hand and I didn’t offer mine. I couldn’t see any Stain on him. That scared me. I was confident MacPherson was working with Amad. If he wasn’t Stained, it suggested that MacPherson wasn’t being controlled. He was helping Amad because he wanted to.
Cuevas got to the point. “Have you found anything worthwhile, Luck? Or have you just been wasting money?”
To confront MacPherson would just shut him down. As a businessman, he was accustomed to all kinds of pressure. Confront a guy like this and all you get is a letter from his attorney. Because he was asking me to report to him directly, he was a control freak. More than anything, he would be looking for ways he could turn the situation to his own advantage. Without knowing the degree of his involvement, I had to assume he would want me to fail so he could go to his daughter, pat her on the head, and tell her she had every reason to be concerned, but there was no sense spending money on a dead end. But his daughter was my client and I had to do the best job I could for her. Even if it pitted me against her father. MacPherson was trying to inject himself into the equation, and I didn’t have a problem with that because I could make him work for me. I’d just have to come at him from a different angle.
The best thing to do was give the truth—or my version of it.
“I don’t think your daughter is in immediate danger, sir,” I began. That ought to get his attention. “But I’m concerned about certain . . . activities . . . that are going on around her.”
“Activities? What is that supposed to mean?”
“As you know, your daughter worked for her husband at his company and is still employed there in an advisory capacity.”
“It’s that old goat Mallondyke, isn’t it? Her father-in-law. He’s keeping Milly around trying to get her into bed.”
“Well, I don’t know anything about that, sir,” I said.
MacPherson turned to Cuevas and said, “I thought this guy was a hot-shot investigator. It’s obvious to anybody who takes two seconds to look at this situation that there’s something going on there. Mallondyke probably killed his own son so he could have a shot at my Milly.”
Actually, the implication that Mallondyke the Third killed his son was completely implausible. From what I had found in research, Barry Mallondyke had learned fidelity and devotion from his father, who was, by my guess, several years younger than MacPherson himself. MacPherson’s comment was interesting though. People will often project their own motivations onto somebody else without thinking. I was willing to bet MacPherson was sampling the interns at his own place of business.
I looked MacPherson in the eye and said, “Actually, my focus has been on Milly’s associate. Goes by the name of Amad. Has white hair and a red patch on his chin. Do you know him, Mr. MacPherson?”
It took a second too long for Lonnie to cough up a lie. He blinked too often as he overdid the indignation and worked himself into a bluster. “Know who? Some guy who works with Milly? Why would I know him? Or anybody else at her office? What are you trying to say?”
“Nothing, sir. I just thought since they spend a lot of time together, possibly outside work, maybe she’d brought him around and you’d seen him. As a businessman, you must be a good judge of character, and I just wanted to know what you thought about him. But if you haven’t met him . . .” I trailed off and let the compliment sink in.
MacPherson took the bait. “Well, if I’d met this . . . person . . . I certainly would have an opinion. I can tell the character of an individual right off. You’re right about that.”
Interesting that MacPherson wouldn’t say Amad’s name and just referred to him as “this person.”
“Well, I have reason to believe this Amad person may be using your daughter.”
“How so?”
I turned to Cuevas, speaking mostly to him. “Sir, I’ll need a little more time to make some connections with what I’ve found already and what I think is happening.” This would scare MacPherson a little and, at the same time, make him feel there was no clear-cut conclusion. “I’m sure, Chief, you will want to get to the bottom of this situation and I hope you won’t mind my checking further into the evidence collected regarding these incidents.”
From the corner of my eye, I could see MacPherson was growing nervous, but he hid it pretty well. I looked back at him and he gave me a squint and said, “What incidents?”
“Well, as I mentioned, I think Milly is being used. It’s possible that Amad is going with her to various jewelry stores and—this is still just conjecture, mind you—stealing gemstones from the stores.”
Both men were silent. This was their little party. I was just playing my role, knowing they had to stick with it.
I continued, “Like I said, I haven’t made any real connections yet. I just have a set of circumstances that may lead to something concrete if I keep on it.”
MacPherson recovered his voice. He was determined to hang on to his line of deflection. He stepped close and leaned in with his face only inches away from m
ine. From there I could smell his early-morning whiskey as he said, “You still need to look a little closer at her father-in-law. I don’t object to you looking into other issues, but you’re going to find there’s something going on with that creep, I guarantee.”
I’m glad he didn’t object to these “other issues” because I wasn’t going to stop looking anyway. I guarantee. “Appreciate the lead, sir. I’m surprised nobody mentioned it to me before. But I’ll devote appropriate time to following up on that possibility.”
“See that you do,” MacPherson emphasized each word singly. Apparently, that was supposed to be intimidating. MacPherson shot a look at the gray sky and backed away. “What do you think, Juan? Can we at least get nine holes before it rains?” MacPherson walked off in the direction of the first tee without waiting for an answer, dismissing me.
Cuevas didn’t say anything to me, but he glowered in my general direction as he followed MacPherson. He hadn’t told me to stop, so if anyone asked about me looking at the evidence boxes, he’d have to say I had permission.
I suspected I’d also pulled the pin on a particular hand grenade and it would likely take a few hours for it to go off.
From the clubhouse window, I watched Cuevas and MacPherson climb into a golf cart and motor down to the first tee. I had my binoculars, so I could make sure they got started. MacPherson drove first and his ball sailed down the fairway a couple hundred yards. Cuevas went next. He took about ten warm-up swings and still sliced into the trees.
Yep. I had at least two hours to wait, unless it started raining.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Boy in the Renaissance Shirt
I went to the men’s room and then had some lunch in the clubhouse. After about an hour, I figured I’d stayed past my welcome. I went out to my car. The skies hadn’t parted but the air was heavy and expectant. I sat in my car and pretended to take calls on my cell phone. I kept my eyes on the exits in my rearview mirror. Finally, after another hour, the weather broke.
Got Luck Page 18