What did that mean? And why did parents always have to be such a pain in the behind?
I reached for a bowl of cereal, and then closed the pantry door with a little too much force. I didn’t want to have to explain to her that a hex had been put on me, meaning that I couldn’t change my hair color, no matter how much I washed my hair or how often I tried to dye it. I was stuck with the bright red, even though my natural color was brunette. Mum had always been a blonde, so I must have taken after my father.
“Can’t you just use witchcraft instead of my hot water tank?” I asked her, pouting as I reached for the kettle. At least I’d be able to have a mug of hot tea. She couldn’t take that away from me.
It was the first time the W word had been used since the night before, and it seemed like more than twelve hours had passed since we had been reunited. Well, a lot of unexpected things had happened since I had picked Mum up from the airport, hadn’t they? We didn’t have time to chat any further that morning, either. I had a case to solve, and Vicky was already dressed and ready to leave to go to the office by eight-fifteen.
She was outfitted very professionally in a pale blue dress skirt that went to her knees and a white button-down top. Her usually messy hair was still pretty messy, but it had been pulled back into a bun. She didn’t look like she had gotten much sleep the night before.
“This is the most personal case I have ever worked on,” she said as we started to drive down the hill, and I nodded sympathetically as I drove the car. She told me how she hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep all night, thinking about what she could have done differently. I probably needed to give her a pep talk about keeping her emotions divorced from detective work so that we could remain impartial and not jump to conclusions—but this was not the right time. It was all still too raw.
“It was only a first date—a date that you wanted to get out of, remember?” I told her. I reminded her that I had been about to call and tell her that Warren had been in an accident, so that she could get out of that restaurant and never see the guy again. She’d thought he was such a weirdo that she’d been just about ready to escape out the bathroom window.
“I just feel responsible,” she said as we reached the bottom of the hill. The town of Swift Valley came into view in a wash of yellows and browns that welcomed in the new season. Made me feel like curling up with a hot chocolate. “If Eamon had never gone on the date with me, he would still be alive. If I had never left to call you, he would still be alive.”
“We don’t know that for certain,” I pointed out. We had no clue who the killer was. For all we knew, it could have been someone who was trailing him and would have struck at any time, sooner or later.
But there were a few strange things that just didn’t add up, and the more I thought about it, the more suspicions I had. For instance, why had the entire staff gone missing all at the same time—leaving the front of the restaurant unattended during the incident? It was pretty unusual to walk into a restaurant and not see any wait staff at all hovering around. And why had Eamon been trying to escape the date if Vicky was so certain that he was really into her? I didn’t want to say this, but guys can tell you whatever they think you want to hear, even if it is not in the ballpark of what you do want to hear. It may not even have anything to do with what they are really feeling themselves. It was possible he’d just been telling Vicky what he thought she wanted to hear, but then he had used his first chance to exit, the moment that she had gone to the bathroom. Might be a bit of a blow to the ego.
The door jingled, and in walked a young woman with dark curls that went halfway down her back and bright blue eyes that were impossible to ignore. She had a stack of papers in her hands, and she fished one out to hand to me, introducing herself with a bright smile that was just a little hesitant. I was about to tell her that we were not currently taking on any new cases or clients, but then I realized that she was handing me a resume.
“Roberta Evens” was written in bold on the top, and her qualifications were spelled out underneath in a column of dot points.
“Oh,” I said, glancing down at it. I’d never had someone apply for a job with me before, so I was a little taken aback. She didn’t seem to have any detective experience, but she did have experience in admin and some hospitality experience, as well. The typical sort of CV for someone in their early twenties who’d had some casual jobs but no full-time career yet. “Er, well, we aren’t really looking to expand our workforce at the moment,” I said. I promised her that I would keep her CV on file and consider it in the future. Even Vicky was only on part-time hours at the moment, and she was looking for more, so she would have to be my first priority if there was any more work to go around
“Oh, I wouldn’t be asking for much,” Roberta hurried to tell me. “I am willing to work just for the experience, if you’d like.” She explained that she was doing a course in criminal justice, and part of that course was to get practical experience on the job. “Really, you’d be doing me a huge favor even just showing me a few of the ropes. Any firsthand experience would be amazing. Plus, I think I can be a good asset to the office. I’m considerate, a fast learner, always eager to try new things—and I don’t mind doing the morning coffee run, either,” she said with a grin.
I glanced over at Vicky, and she shrugged. Well. Maybe it would be good to get a little extra help around the office. Plus, a set of objective eyes to help me out on this case that Vicky was taking so personally. I figured now that I was finding my own feet as a detective, coming up the ranks a little so to speak, I could pay it forward and teach the next generation of up-and-coming detectives. It might even be fun to play teacher for a little while.
“Well, my mum has been hassling me about spending more time with her while she is back in town—so yes, I could do with some extra help around here,” I said, flashing Roberta a warm smile. “Welcome to the team.”
3
Three housemates was a lot when you were used to living alone. Earplugs had become my best friend, but when you had someone right next door playing guitar until three in the morning, earplugs sometimes didn’t cut it. On this night, I thought I was in the clear. There was no music coming from the room next door. So I smiled and turned off my lamp, ready for an early night. Looking forward to being the first one up so that I would actually get to use some hot water.
“Maybe it’s this app!” Vicky said as she barreled her way into my bedroom right as I was about to drift off to sleep. Mum was still keeping to herself a little, not fully settled in, and with Vicky around, we hadn’t been able to have any serious discussions so far about any of the topics we were supposed to discuss. But I think Mum was happy with it that way—I was starting to think that she was encouraging Vicky to stay around purposely as some sort of shield between the two of us.
I flicked on my lamp, stretched and yawned. “What about the app?” I asked her. She started to tell me her theory.
“What if Activate wasn’t as safe as it was made out to be?” she said and told me that she had been doing research into it. “There is a growing community online that believes the app just tricks users into thinking it’s super secure, so that they let their guard down and reveal personal information,” she said with wide eyes. “And then that information gets sold to third parties who use it for who-knows-what purposes to keep track of us.”
I decided to choose my words carefully. She was starting to sound a lot like Eamon with his conspiracy theories. I just nodded politely and allowed her to keep explaining.
“The idea came to me when you mentioned that the killer might have been trailing Eamon for days or weeks.” She held her phone out to me and brought up the app on the screen, showing me how many details she had put into it, even though she had checked the button that made it “private” to potential dates. “Everyone who is single is on this thing these days,” she said with her eyes gleaming. “It could be the way that the killer is tracking victims.” She bit her lip. “I mean, I have to admit that Eamon
and I did discuss this sort of thing over dinner. He told me that he had his suspicions about the app, and that he had been cautious about using it. But that going on a date with me was well worth the risk.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “He actually seemed really worried about using the app, Ruby. The more I think about it, the more I think that it is connected to his death somehow.”
Oh geez. She may have only spent one date with Eamon, but I got the feeling that some of his ideas had really affected her.
I nodded. I supposed it was an okay theory. Maybe not the conspiracy theory angle, but it was possible that someone had tracked his location from the app. “There is a lot of sensitive data getting leaked these days,” I said, agreeing with her. “Just because an app says it is trustworthy, doesn’t mean that it is.”
Vicky was perched on the end of my bed, in her pajamas that had little guitars printed all over them, looking thoughtful. “Doesn’t that mean everyone who uses the app is in danger?” she asked me. “Don’t we have a responsibility to protect other people?”
“Well, yes, if your theory is right,” I said, choosing my words carefully. I wasn’t sure her theory was actually right. I thought she was still blaming herself for Eamon’s death and taking this whole thing far too personally. She’d only spent twenty minutes total with this guy in her whole life.
Vicky had an idea for what we should do next. Undercover dating. She asked me to get out my phone and download Activate. “Hang on, aren’t we working off the theory that this is not secure?” I asked as I tentatively hit the download button and waited. Vicky assured me that I would be able to handle myself, as would she, if we each went on a series of dates to try and find out what was going on. It might be the best chance for us to find our prime suspect.
At that point, I was willing to try anything. I started to fill in my profile, even though my eyelids were droopy from being so tired that I felt like I could fall asleep right there and then. But I entered my name and age when prompted, and then I put in a short bio describing myself . . . leaving out that I was both a detective and a witch. I picked a few photos that I thought were flattering and showed me in my best light, and then set my age limits to five years either side of my age. Twenty-two to thirty-two. “There.”
I showed the screen to Vicky, and she frowned deeply.
I had never used a dating app in my whole life, and apparently, I had done it wrong. According to the expert. “You need to choose more up-to-date photos,” Vicky said, taking the phone to fill in my profile for me. I supposed that she knew better than I did. But I did interject a little. “Those shots are only six months old,” I said. “That’s pretty up-to-date, isn’t it? I don’t look any older than that. And I haven’t lost or gained any weight in the meanwhile.”
“You have a completely different hair color now,” she said flatly. “You’ve gone from black to red.”
Yeah, no thanks to some kind of hex that had been placed on me. I sighed and chose a more recent photo, even though I always thought the light picked up on the red too much and made it look far brighter than it actually was in real life. All you could see in the photo was fiery red hair and then a face underneath that, which seemed to take second place.
Vicky shot me a sympathetic look as she put the finishing touches on my profile for me.
“Don’t worry. There will be men out there who like redheads.”
“Okay, thanks,” I said wryly as I hugged my legs into me. If I hadn’t been self-conscious about it before, then I definitely was now.
“Well, go on, hit publish,” Vicky said, giving me a nudge. She passed the phone back to me, allowing me to do the official honors. So, there it was—I was officially online dating. The things I did in the name of detective work, hey?
And then the matches came rolling in.
The Onyx was buzzing with people that time on a Thursday night. It was poetry evening, and even though there weren’t many acts on the bill that night, there were plenty of people gathered at the bar and in the booths. Good, I thought, the busier the better as far as meeting for a first date went. It meant that no one would be noticing us or staring. Well, except for the owner, Akiro, of course. I had warned him about what I was up to and asked him to remain impartial and keep his cool, and not to blow my cover if he waited on my table. But I kept catching him staring before he quickly turned away each time.
Not exactly keeping his cool. I caught him staring again, and he dropped the mug he had been about to pour an espresso shot into. It smashed onto the tiles behind the coffee machine.
My first date was a guy named Joel who was a little bit younger than me. He was twenty-three and worked in a call center in a large town thirty minutes away. Vicky had done the majority of the swiping for me and swiped right because he was a guitar player. But that was her thing, not mine. Still, he seemed nice enough. Well-styled dirty blonde hair in a bit of a quiff, and clothes that looked like they had expensive labels. Probably a bit “posher” than the type I usually went for, but seeing as these were purely professional dates, I smiled as he approached the table.
“Are you called Ruby because of your red hair?” he asked after we had been seated for a few minutes.
I just stared at him and blinked a few times.
Definitely not, seeing as I had been called Ruby since the day I was born, and I’d only had red hair for the past four months. But Joel couldn’t have known that. It still seemed like a pretty dumb question, though. I’d never really gotten the story of my name from my mum, but she didn’t seem like the sort of person who would name a child after the color of their hair. I wasn’t a cat.
Joel was nice enough. It was just that he was a little young and from a different lifestyle than me. We had nothing to talk about, and so I felt a little awkward sitting there listening to him talking about his workplace. I’d never worked in a call center, and thus had no experience of the politics in one. Joel sure seemed to find it fascinating, and he spent about twenty minutes explaining to me the workplace dynamics of a multi-floor call center that took inbound calls for tech support. He went on and on about how much stress everyone was under and how passive-aggressive and demanding that the management were—throwing around about twenty different names that meant nothing to me
Luckily, our starters arrived at that time, and I could finally get a word in. I wasn’t sure I could stand one more rant about call wait times or about how often someone named Fiona took all the bananas from the fruit bowl and hoarded them in her desk.
It was time to bring up the topic of Activate.
I asked him how long he had been on the app, and he told me that he’d only downloaded it the day before. Of course, he may had been lying, but if that was true and the app was related to the killings, then he couldn’t have been our killer.
I glanced at the time, wondering how quickly I could wrap this date up. Maybe I needed to duck to the bathroom, call Vicky, and asked her to ring back with an emergency.
Joel shrugged after he had finished his calamari and told me that he was just looking for something fun and casual—and did I want to keep the date going back at his place once we were done eating? I just thanked him for a good chat and told him that I had other plans holding me up. I supposed you couldn’t blame a guy for trying, though.
As soon as he left, I banged my head against the table and groaned a little bit. How did people do this?
I wasn’t sure how many of these dates I could stand to go on. I hoped we’d have a breakthrough or a new lead soon. Joel had been a dead end.
I had my next date lined up immediately afterwards, so I didn’t have time to think, and I definitely didn’t have time to cancel. The guy was already making a beeline for the coffee shop door while Akiro cleared the table and said, “Reset for round two,” in a voice that was slightly laced with judgment.
“This is just for work,” I said, but I wondered why I had chosen The Onyx as the location, where Akiro could witness every date firsthand. Every awkward interact
ion, every little cringe that either of us made. Every pause in the conversation where we ran out of things to say.
I felt like these guys were either one extreme or the other. Either they only wanted a casual fling, or they wanted to lock you down there and then, and pretty much propose marriage.
The next guy had only been seated for about three minutes when he stared into my eyes and asked. “So, how many kids do you want?”
“How many kids?” I repeated back to him, almost spitting my drink out. Was this a usual first-date question? I didn’t even know this guy’s last name.
His first name was Teddy, and he was an athletic guy who worked at the air force base a little out of town, training pilots and giving talks at schools to try and convince young people that joining up for the army was a great life choice. He told me that he already had six kids, and he was looking for more.
Six kids? More? “It’s really no big deal,” he said with a shrug. “By the time you’ve had that many, another few is no big deal.”
I just stared at him blankly. Maybe this guy had a big yawning hole inside him that no number of children in the world was going to fill. I wasn’t sure that I would be able to fill that hole either. He also had a voracious appetite, as he ordered both an entrée and a full meal of spaghetti carbonara, but I could barely get through my starter course that time and skipped ordering a main course altogether. Too many dates. Too many meals.
Just as he took his last mouthful of pasta, he gazed up at me with a meaningful look in his eyes.
“Seriously, Ruby, you would make a great mother.”
I thought about my own mum. She’d wanted me to stay home that night and watch a reality cooking show with her. I’d told her we would have to make it another night because I had some very serious work to do. But I think I was using the case as an excuse. A reason to avoid having any serious conversations. And I think she was doing the same thing—she had also been spending a lot of time with Vicky around the house. Every time it had just been Mum and I in the room, she would find a reason to call out for Vicky to come and join us.
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