by Mara Webb
“Okay, keep your hair on!” I shouted, smiling at my use of the phrase. It was something my adopted mom had said all the time when I was a kid, and apparently, I’m now at the age where those sorts of things just tumbled out of my mouth.
By the time I was downstairs I thought whoever was on the other side of the door was going to kick it down. When I slid the bolt across and opened it, Mabel almost fell onto the hallway floor.
“Sadie!” she gasped. “You’re up!”
“Yeah, pretty hard to sleep through the sound of someone trying to break into my house. What’s up?” I asked.
“Miller told me that I should work with you today, he’s not feeling well,” she explained. I felt my stomach turn.
“Okay,” I said. “Well, where did you guys get up to yesterday? What did the fiancé say?”
“We didn’t get that far, but we have a name and an address,” she said.
“Well, that’s something,” I nodded.
“Yeah, I think overall it was a great first day, although Miller kept saying that I needed to know about his migraines, he said he gets terrible migraines sometimes and that the frequency of certain voices can trigger them. He seemed to have a rough time with them yesterday,” she explained.
I smiled as I considered Miller’s lie to get her to stop talking. Evidently, she hadn’t listened.
“Why don’t you go through there and I’ll be with you in a minute,” I said, pointing to the living room. “Do you want a coffee or anything?”
“Oh, not for me. I’ve already had three espressos this morning and if I have another one my heart my explode. Caffeine doesn’t seem to agree with me,” she rambled. And yet, she’s had three intensely caffeinated drinks already and it’s barely seven in the morning, hmm.
I wasn’t wearing my fancy pajamas on account of having planned to eat a pint of ice cream last night and I hadn’t wanted to spill chocolate on them. It was a baggy old t-shirt that stopped just above the knee. Hey, I didn’t have to get dressed up for company if I didn’t know they would be coming. I staggered into the kitchen and flicked on the kettle to boil.
An image of Miller sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast suddenly flooded my mind. He was supposed to be here today, but he wasn’t. We were supposed to have a night together, and yet I seemed to have thrown a spanner in the works, again.
Why was I sabotaging my relationship? Maybe I should speak to this psychiatrist Kate has been talking to. As the idea occurred to me, the kitchen radio switched itself on and I quickly realized that I was listening to Dr. Gloria Honeywell’s slot.
“I have received an email from a young man who says he is at his wits end. I will maintain his anonymity of course, but you must remember that many of the problems I am contacted about have connecting threads, things that bind all of us. Perhaps this person’s story will relate to you somehow,” Gloria began.
The kettle grew loud as the water reached boiling point and I missed a few of the words at the beginning of the listener email.
“… yet his friends treat him poorly. Could it be jealousy? Possibly. Remember that it can be hurtful to flaunt your success in the face of those that are in a period of struggle in their lives. Think to a time when you—”
“Sadie?” Mable called. I reached over and shut off the radio.
“Yeah, I’m coming now,” I shouted back, quickly pouring the hot water into my mug and making it halfway to the living room before I realized I hadn’t added any coffee. I couldn’t even muster the energy to go back and make a proper drink, so boiling hot water would have to do.
When I sat down on the sofa, I realized that Mabel had spread out the photocopies of Beth and Drew’s guestbook on the coffee table.
“Have you looked at these?” she asked. I shook my head. “Well Cindy lives on the island right, like, not even far from the cliffs. I heard a rumor she has a house out on the other side, she makes pretty good money selling pictures.”
“Okay…” I said, moving to take a deep inhale of the hot coffee before remembering that there was no coffee in my cup.
“Why was she at the campsite?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“She’s signed in as a guest, that means she slept there in a dirty tent,” Mabel said, pointing at the name ‘Electra Gordon’ and nodding in my direction.
“Do you… do you know that Cindy Saco and Electra Gordon are different words?” I asked, leaning forward out of a sudden concern that Mabel was about to reveal that she’d had some horrific head injury and forgotten how to read.
“It’s an alias!” Mabel laughed. “I had a trial shift as a waitress at the Italian restaurant on the high street, we had a booking under that name, and it was Cindy with a few friends. I asked her why she didn’t give her real name and she said it was because she didn’t want her fame getting her preferential treatment. I said to her that I didn’t think she was all that famous!”
“You said that to her face?” I asked, smiling slightly as Mabel demonstrated yet again that she wasn’t good at navigating social interactions.
“I sure did! I said that I’d seen flyers for her exhibit on streetlights and stuff, that I knew her name but that I would never have put her down as some A-lister. Anyway, she had a word with the manager after that and I didn’t get the job. I mean, I don’t think those two things are related,” she laughed. Okay then.
“Back up, so you’re saying that Cindy was camping on the cliffs in the days leading up to her death?”
“Yep, looks like she was sharing lot five with a guy called Shaun Kaye,” Mabel said, reading from the print outs.
“Who’s that?”
“I don’t know, maybe we should ask Ryder because we aren’t supposed to go out by ourselves in case someone tries to murder us,” she grimaced. I wouldn’t say it out loud, obviously, but I felt as though Mabel was at greater risk of being murdered than I was. I was half-surprised Miller hadn’t strangled her yesterday, but she had already given me some useful information this morning, so I’d have to give her the benefit of the doubt.
“You know some magic, right?” I asked.
“Oh sure! My mom and dad made sure to give me a crash course in defense magic after Greta was—” she cut herself off. Her sister had been murdered, this young girl in front of me was my cousin and I needed to treat her like the family she was, regardless of how annoying she could be. “I think they were worried that I would become the next peacekeeper once Greta was gone.”
“That’s why they took you away?” I asked.
“That’s what my mom said. She gave me a big speech about not having the strength to lose two daughters,” she sighed. “But hey, as long as we have a guardian with us, we’ll be fine, right?”
I nodded, my lips pressed together in a thin line and my crinkled forehead betraying my doubt. “Look, I’ll call Miller and Ryder and try to get them to meet us here.” That was if Miller would take my calls. Maybe Mabel should call him? Although he was probably trying to dodge her too.
I’d left my cell phone upstairs and so I made my way out of the room and back to my nightstand where it was still charging. The sound of heavy breathing from somewhere in the room stopped me in my tracks. Someone was here.
“Sadie,” a voice growled. A silhouette emerged, stepping forward enough for the hazy sunlight to touch the edges of a face, Miller’s face.
“What are you doing?” I asked, stepping toward my door to push it closed. I didn’t want Mabel to decide to run up the stairs and start asking a million questions, we needed to speak privately.
He quickly closed the gap between us and kissed me, cupping his hands around my face and making my knees buckle. I reached my arms around him for support, feeling the heat of his shirtless skin against my own.
I hadn’t had time to react to his semi-nakedness when I’d first seen him, he’d moved too quickly, but he was wearing jeans and nothing else. I had closed my eyes, losing myself in the moment, but my eyes flickered open for a
second and I could see that his shoulders were glistening with sweat. Had he run here?
He finally pulled away, leaving me breathless and yearning for more. We needed to speak, but I also felt like there were more interesting things we could be doing with our time than engaging in polite conversation.
“I’ve been thinking about you and Ryder,” he began. I opened my mouth to say something, but he continued before I could say anything. “I wanted to make sure you knew that I was in this, you and me, this is what I want. I know he’s been trying to make moves, and apparently he succeeded, but—”
“Nothing happened,” I blurted out. I sighed and dropped onto the foot of the bed. “I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it, and it hurts me to say that out loud, but nothing happened yesterday. I grabbed his hand as the car fell into a pothole and I guess my magic shocked some of his hair blue. Effie started jumping to conclusions and that’s what you overheard. Although, if jealousy is what it takes to get you to kiss me like that then…” I smirked.
He sat on the bed next to me, ran a finger across the right side of my face and tucked the loose strands of hair behind my ear. His skin was so hot against mine; it was like he was feverish, but he didn’t look ill. He looked all kinds of fine, actually.
“How about this,” he began. “I stop running off every time I hear something I don’t like, and you let me stay over tonight so I can show you exactly how much I want to be with you.” He had a wicked glint in his eye that I knew would be at the forefront of my mind all day. I glanced over at the clock on my nightstand.
“Tonight, is very far away,” I complained. I leaned forward to kiss him again, but Mabel had started yelling up the stairs and it was an instant mood killer.
“I knew she was here,” Miller said. “I could hear her talking from the other end of the beach.”
“She’s very…” I realized that I didn’t have an end to that sentence. “She’s my cousin.”
“I know,” Miller nodded.
“She pointed out that Cindy was staying on the camp site, it looks like she was in a tent with a guy called Shaun Kaye,” I said. Miller raised his eyebrows at the name. “Judging by the look on your face, that isn’t the name of her fiancé.”
“No, it is not. Maybe Cindy was playing the field while she was sleeping in the field,” he laughed. “A woman is dead; I know I shouldn’t joke.”
“Well, I’m glad you worked that out on your own,” I smiled.
“So, we have a farmer lying about when he last spoke to Cindy, potentially a secret lover and if the fiancé knew then maybe he was out for revenge. Where do we even start with that today?”
“Don’t forget that the exhibit went ahead without her,” I pointed out. “I get the impression her colleagues weren’t all that cut up about their boss getting killed. They might be worth investigating too.”
“We’d better get started then,” Miller said. “I don’t suppose you have a shirt I could borrow; I seem to have misplaced mine.”
“I noticed,” I smirked. I snapped my fingers and watched the cotton of Miller’s sheriff uniform weave itself across his body. Hey, maybe I was getting good at this magic stuff after all.
13
Ryder met us at the exhibit space. Mabel had been speaking at all three of us for almost ten straight minutes and Miller offered to jump on the grenade by suggesting he take her for coffee while Ryder and I spoke to Cindy’s assistant. I saw Ryder mouth a silent ‘thank you’ to him before Miller took off up the street.
Mabel’s voice didn’t seem to grow quieter as she got further away, physicists should study her, her volume could be the key to unlocking the secrets of the universe or something. A young woman wearing two different silk scarves ran toward us jangling a large set of keys. She was wearing a pair of black framed glasses that didn’t have any glass. What would you even call them? Just ‘frames’?
“Sorry, I slept through my alarm,” she said, searching through the dozens of keys to find the one that opened the door to the building. She was rake thin, wearing a cardigan that was made for someone six times her size and a skintight dress underneath that displayed her skeletal frame.
“Take your time,” Ryder smiled. She looked up at him and seemed suitably soothed by his words, blushing slightly as she took in his appearance. Had it not been for Miller’s invigorating kiss an hour ago, and the promise of more later, I might have felt a stab of jealousy over this flirtatious exchange. I guess the fact that the word ‘jealous’ has even crossed my mind suggests that I am, just a little.
When we finally got inside, I was astonished to see that every wall was now bare. There wasn’t a single photograph left in here, and the floor was covered in scuff marks from the shoes of those that attended the event the night before.
“Looks like you sold out,” Ryder mumbled.
“Oh yes, we had a record turn out last night,” the woman nodded.
“Why did you decide to go ahead with it?” I asked. This seemed to cause confusion and the woman wrinkled her nose at me as if she had encountered something malodorous. “Cindy is dead. Why didn’t you cancel it? She was found yesterday morning; it seems callous to sell off her work while a murder investigation is ongoing.”
“Art is often a snapshot of a point in time,” the woman began. “Cindy locked all these little moments into her photographs, these things reflect temporal beauty. If we had waited even a day then the magic of these pieces might have been lost, you know?”
“I’d argue that an artist’s work is worth more after they’ve died too, right?” Ryder added.
“Yes, there is also that,” she said, shifting her weight awkwardly from one foot to the other. “It becomes finite. We know that there will never be any more photographs taken by her and her camera, so the ones she already took become more valuable. It’s simple supply and demand, I know that sounds harsh, but it’s just a reality.”
“And if the artist who owns the work dies, who gets the money from the sales?” I asked. “Obviously if she was alive, she would have taken the lion’s share of the profit from the exhibit.”
“It doesn’t go to me; I just get paid the same amount I would have been paid if she was here. She has an accountant in another country that takes care of her finances, so it’s not like I could have stolen the money even if I wanted to, which I don’t… obviously. It probably goes to her lawyers or her estate or whatever, I don’t know if she had a will, but I guess we’ll find out. Knowing Cindy, she probably donated it all to a cat sanctuary or something.”
“When did you last see her?” Ryder asked.
“A few days ago, she was heading out to the cliffs with the guys to try and get better access to the caves up there. She wanted to take more equipment this time, she said she thought she’d found something that would make her name, you know? Really give her global recognition as an artist,” she explained.
“Like what?” I pressed.
“I don’t know, she didn’t tell me. I got the impression she’d found something rare enough that a photo of it would sell for thousands, but she wanted to keep it a secret until she had the perfect shot.”
“What guys?” Ryder said. “You said she was going to the cliffs with the guys, what guys?”
“She was working with a couple of rock-climbing people. I get the impression that she was hooking up with one of them,” she said casually.
“But she was engaged,” I stated, even though I had suspected she was cheating based on the guest book information.
“She was engaged, but Cindy was evolving beyond monogamy. She would often say to me, ‘Sam, one boyfriend for life is no way to live’, and she was right!”
I looked at Ryder out of the corner of my eye, now questioning whether his version of the breakup between him and Cindy was the truth. He’d said she’d wanted to travel, but maybe she had been cheating on him too.
“Evolved, is that what she called it?” Ryder mumbled.
“Yes, it isn’t kind to expect one
person to be the sole source of your every physical need until the day you die. Variety is the spice of life, as they say,” Sam grinned.
“And did her fiancé know that her life was so spicy?” I asked.
“That I don’t know, but you should know what to expect when you fall in love with a free spirit. She had a creative heart; she can’t be tied down to one man.”
The look on Sam’s face gave the impression that she thought what she’d told us was perfectly reasonable, but jealousy could very well be the reason that Cindy was killed. How many partners did she have? Anyone of them could have decided they weren’t ‘evolved’ enough to handle sharing her with someone else.
Movement through the window behind me caught my attention, when I turned I saw that Mabel and Miller had returned. Miller widened his eyes at me in a clear cry for help, so I excused myself from the room, thanking Sam for her cooperation.
“Did you get anywhere?” Miller asked when I stepped outside.
“It seems that Cindy was polyamorous. I’m not totally sure I’m using that word correctly…” I paused. “What I mean to say is that she was sleeping with whoever she liked regardless of the fact that she was engaged. The key will be to find out if the fiancé was okay with that arrangement because if not—”
“He might have pushed her off a cliff!” Mabel declared, finishing my sentence as if she’d solved the whole thing.
“Yes, exactly,” I nodded.
“Alright, well I have it on good authority that the fiancé works at the barber’s shop by the old building that was a bank but is now a gym,” Miller said. “I have to say the whole thing because we’ve got a lot of barber shops around here.”
“No, I like getting the full picture,” I nodded.
“Are we actually going to interrogate this guy as a four?” Ryder asked. “Whether he actually did it or not, we have to bear in mind that his fiancé is dead and four people coming at him with a million questions might not be the best approach.”
“I agree,” Miller said. “It’s probably best that we split, cover more ground that way. Mabel and I can go and speak with him, see what he knew about Cindy’s extracurricular activities, report back to you guys once we know.”