“Your teacher was Edna Weller.”
Teag nodded. “When I started working to develop my Weaver magic with Mrs. Teller, I thought about asking her whether what Mrs. Weller told me would be possible. Then one night, Mrs. Teller needed to borrow from my strength to trap an imp in a special kind of basket. That’s when I knew the other story must have been true.”
“Well, whatever your teacher wove into that rug is gone now,” I said. “Something strong… and nasty had been trapped there, but all that’s left is a husk and some real bad resonance.” I took a deep breath. “So… we need to find out what kind of monster it was and how to trap it again or kill it, before more people die.”
“Do you think Alicia’s sensed anything?” Teag asked.
“Crap. Sorren hasn’t called back on that. I forgot about her. Let me call.” I dialed, and Alicia picked up on the second ring.
“Whatever it is, the answer is no,” she said, sounding a little prickly before I had even opened my mouth.
“Um, just checking in to see if you’ve gotten any strange messages from beyond,” I replied.
“Hell, yes. Which is why I’ve left town—and so has every other real clairvoyant and spirit medium I know,” Alicia said. What I’d originally thought was anger in her tone I realized now was fear. “I don’t know what’s going on, and I don’t want to know, but there’s something evil and powerful loose in Charleston, and it’s the kind of thing no one with my kind of talent should be within a hundred miles of.”
“Can you tell what it is? A demon, maybe?”
“Not a demon. They don’t need a medium; they can possess anyone who’s vulnerable. If I had to guess, I’d say this was an amped up ghost chock full of anger and ready for revenge. And since a strong ghost can possess an unwilling medium—well, that’s why I got the hell out of Dodge, so to speak.”
“Any suggestions on getting rid of it?”
Alicia was quiet for so long I wasn’t sure she intended to answer. “A ghost like that is anchored to something. That’s how it hangs on to its power. Destroy the anchor, and the ghost loses energy. It probably won’t cross over on its own, but you’ll be able to wrangle it a lot easier if it isn’t juiced up.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Want me to call you when it’s over?”
“You won’t have to,” Alicia replied. “Whatever’s out there is strong enough, even the ghosts are scared of it. When they calm down, I’ll know it’s safe to come home.”
I ended the call and could see from Teag’s expression that I wasn’t hiding how bad it was. Hell, he might even have heard most of it. “Teag, give me a second, and I’ll tell you what she said, but I’ve got to make a quick call first.” I slipped into the office and fretted until Kell picked up. “Hey,” I said. “I need you to trust me on this. Can you and your team promise not to go out hunting for a little while? It’s dangerous.”
Kell snorted. “Yeah, we figured that out when the ghosts blew out our equipment last night. Readings off the charts. And the really strange thing was, they weren’t trying to hurt us. I could have sworn they were trying to warn us away.”
I swallowed hard. “I think you’re right.”
“Cassidy, we mapped out where the ghost readings went ballistic. They match the locations where the Smiley Killer’s victims were found. What the hell is going on?”
“I don’t know, but I think there’s a really strong… hell, I don’t know what… ‘spirit’ maybe, that’s escaped from where it had been bound. Now it’s loose, and it’s angry.”
“Like that World’s Fair ghost?” Kell had helped us out with another dangerous haunting a little while ago, so this wasn’t his first rodeo.
“Yeah,” I replied. “And you remember how much fun that was, right?” It hadn’t been, not at all.
“You need a bodyguard?” he asked. “I’ve still got a shotgun loaded up with rock salt.”
“Keep it handy,” I said. “Just promise me you won’t go looking for trouble.”
He paused. “Do I get to make you promise, too?”
“I won’t take any unnecessary risks,” I said.
“Not the same thing. Dammit, Cassidy! I worry about you—and about Teag, too.”
“We’ll be okay,” I replied, though I couldn’t guarantee that.
“If I can stand down from investigating, and I’m the ghost hunter, why can’t you? How is this your business?”
This wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have right now, and certainly not over the phone. “I’ve got to go,” I said. “But I promise I’ll do everything I can to stay safe. You just do the same and Kell, please… trust me.”
Kell swore under his breath and sighed. “I will. I do. But I don’t like it. Are you part of some secret government agency that hunts monsters or something?”
“No,” I said honestly. “I’m not part of a secret government agency.” The Alliance transcends borders, and it’s been doing its job longer than most of the governments have been in existence.
“Just... be careful. I care.”
“So do I,” I murmured. “And I will be. If I find out more, I’ll let you know. See you soon.” I ended the call and closed my eyes. I liked Kell a lot, and I didn’t want him to get hurt. But until I knew our relationship might be permanent, I couldn’t bring him in on the secret. Anthony had been willing to accept the truth rather than let Teag go. I didn’t know if Kell and I had reached that point yet, or if we would, and until then, I didn’t want to try my luck.
Teag glanced up when I came back to the break room. “Let me guess—Kell doesn’t like you investigating.”
“Got it in one,” I sighed. “I don’t imagine Anthony’s thrilled, either?”
Teag shook his head. “No. Although I think he’s more worried that we’ll spook a trigger-happy cop than get killed by a ghostly psychopath.” He ran a hand back through his hair. “Anything else from Kell?”
I relayed the news about the ghostly activity, and Teag grimaced. “How much of the conversation did you catch with Alicia?” He actually had picked up on most of it, but I filled in the missing pieces.
“So the question is: are the ghosts trying to warn us that the killer is back, or chomping at the bit to get some revenge?” Teag said.
“I don’t know. Both, maybe.”
“Let’s go see the aunt of the seller who brought in that ring,” Teag suggested. “It’s still early, and Sorren won’t rise for a while, so we’ve got time. Maybe we’ll figure out how her aunt knew a killer.”
Teag had the address from the sale, and before long we pulled up in front of a neat house in North Charleston. We walked to the door and knocked, but the woman who answered looked much different than she had when she came into Trifles and Folly just days before. Jenny’s red-rimmed eyes and the tiredness in her face suggested recent tragedy.
“I’m so sorry to bother you,” I said gently. “But it’s really important. Could we please possibly speak with your aunt about the ring you sold us?”
Jenny stared at us. “I wish you could. God, I wish I could. But she’s dead. Aunt Sophie was murdered last night, locked in her bedroom. How in the hell did a serial killer do that?”
Aunt Sophie. Sophie Johnston. The last name didn’t match because both women had changed theirs for marriage. A tangle of emotions made it hard to find my voice. “I’m so sorry,” I finally managed. “We had no idea.”
“She never liked that pin,” Jenny said. “Swore it brought bad luck, but I think she was also afraid to get rid of it, you know? And maybe she was right. Sold if off and look what happened.”
“I’m sure it’s just an awful coincidence,” Teag consoled. Maybe he was right. Then again, perhaps the Smiley Killer’s ghost took it personally that she had gotten rid of the trophy. “Did she ever tell you the name of the man who gave her the pin? It’s important—for insurance reasons,” he added, managing to look entirely sincere.
Jenny shook her head. “I asked her about it, but she just clammed up and s
aid it was a bad bit of business and the less said, the better. I got the feeling he might have stalked her, you know? Like she wasn’t actually dating him, but that he wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer?”
I nodded sympathetically, thinking that Jenny’s aunt might have avoided becoming one of the killer’s victims the first time around, but he had still managed to wrap up his loose ends from beyond the grave. “We’re so sorry to intrude,” I said. “And I know this is a bad time. But if you find out something as you’re going through your aunt’s effects, please let us know. It’s important.” I handed her one of my cards, and she took it, then closed the door as we made our way back to my SUV.
“Well, that was awful and awkward,” Teag said with a sigh as we got back into the car. “But it confirms your vision. I’ve got an idea. Let’s go back to the store, and I’ll see what I can pull up from either the police or old news accounts about the victims and the missing items. We might be able to narrow down what we’re looking for.”
We still had several hours until sunset, and Maggie had already promised to close up and feed Baxter, so we picked up some Chinese take-out and got back to the store after Maggie was gone. I didn’t want to freak Teag out, but I had the feeling we were being watched, although I knew no one had followed us, and no one suspicious lingered around the shop when we returned. I’ve learned the hard way to trust my intuition, but this time, I couldn’t spot a tail, or figure who would want to shadow us.
Teag and I fired up our laptops on the break room table, with him sifting through hacked police files while I searched old files in online newspapers.
By the time we finished our food, Teag had a list ready. He slid it across the table. “That’s what the cops have in the file about victims and missing jewelry, with as much of a description as they bothered to write down.”
I scanned the list. “Kelly Atkins, garnet cocktail ring. Valerie Stevens, gold and pearl brooch. Roberta Warde, crystal and silver pendant necklace. Polly Wright, gold pin in the shape of a ‘P.’ Lisa Wentworth, gold signet ring.” I read the bit of description provided, which wasn’t much.
“We know the gold and pearl pin was given to Jenny’s aunt,” I said. “Do you know which ring was found with the body of the first victim?” I asked. “And what was found with Sophie Johnston’s body?”
A few minutes later, Teag had my answer. “The garnet ring was found with Ann Delarue’s body,” he replied. “But with Sophie, it was her own ring removed from her hand and placed next to the body.”
“So what do you think? Maybe he gave Ann a trophy as well, and she was wearing it, so his spirit took it off the body, but that might be as far as he could make off with it, if he’s limited as a ghost,” I mused.
“But Sophie had sold the brooch and didn’t wear it, so he followed his pattern with what she had with her.”
I nodded. “So it’s not so much he’s ‘leaving’ the jewelry as he’s still removing it, just not very far now, because he can’t.”
“That’s one really sick ghost,” Teag said with a shudder.
I worked in silence for a while, and then looked, up, grinning in victory. “I managed to find pictures of all the victims online, both their obituary photo and in some cases, pictures from receptions and business events. Let’s see if any of them were wearing their special jewelry in the photos.”
Teag brought his chair around, and we went through the photos together, making them as large as possible to see details. I felt a stab of sorrow as I eyed the faces in the pictures, seeing them young and happy and knowing what lay ahead of them.
“Look,” he said, crowding close to my shoulder. He pointed to the screen, and I zoomed in even more. “A gold pin shaped like a ‘P,’” he said, and sure enough, Pamela’s picture showed her wearing a scarf with a large monogram pin securing it to her shoulder. When I switched to Roberta’s photos, she wore the silver and crystal necklace in nearly every one we found of her.
“Must have been a favorite,” I mused. None of Lisa’s photos showed her hands, so we struck out with an image of the signet ring, but I figured it would be the easiest of the pieces to identify.
“So what did he do with the other trophies?” I wondered, leaning back in my chair. “Are there other people out there who’ve been wearing his sick prizes for decades—and is he going to try to kill them next?”
“What if he’s not after the trophies?” Teag questioned. “What if he’s back for revenge against the people who didn’t let him get his way?”
I chewed my lip as I thought about that. “So Sophie died because she rebuffed his advances. But what about Ann? And Edna died of a heart attack—but could it have been caused by seeing a ghost she thought she had bound in a rug for all eternity?”
Teag went back to work and let out a low whistle. “So we knew Ann was Edna’s sister, right? But according to her obituary, she was preceded in death by a husband, Vincent, and one son, Steven, who was declared dead in 2005.”
“Declared dead?” I echoed. “As in, missing for seven years and then pronounced ‘legally dead’ as opposed to finding-a-body-dead?”
Teag nodded, and I searched for the name Steven Delarue. “Hey, here it is. A notice in the paper back in 1997 about him going missing, asking for anyone with information to contact the police. And then another notice, from 2005, declaring him dead. There’s an obituary, but it’s really short.” I stared at the photograph that went with the obit, a smiling young man in his early twenties, although something about the look in his eyes made me cringe.
“So Steven went missing the same year as the Smiley Killer attacks,” Teag mused. “Is there a date for when he disappeared?”
I shook my head. “More likely to be in the police files.”
Teag did a little more hacking and came up looking queasy. “The last Smiley Killer attack happened in August of 1997. Steven was reported missing at the end of September. So he vanished after the killings stopped. Shit, Cassidy… I know this is far-fetched, but you don’t think he could be the one Edna…”
I fidgeted with a pen as I thought. “Let’s think it through. Reported missing,” I repeated. “Which means if he was the Smiley Killer, and if someone got rid of him, they could have done it any time after the last murder and waited a bit to report him missing to blur the connection.” I sighed. “I’m thinking your idea isn’t so crazy. Edna helping her sister, Ann by trapping him somehow in that rug is looking more and more likely,” I said.
“Last time, all the Smiley Killer’s victims were women under thirty,” Teag said, tapping his finger on the table as he thought. “But if Ann was his mother, she was much older, and if he stalked Sophie, she was probably around his age back then, so she had to be around fifty now.”
“Another break in the pattern,” I replied. “Which looks more like taking revenge than going on a new spree.”
Just then, a text from Kell drew my attention. “Shit,” I muttered. “Check the news. There’s another murder.”
Teag streamed the local news channel, just in time to catch the end of the coverage. “Authorities have identified the victim as Vernon Walker, age sixty-five. Police have not released details, but they say they are treating the death as a homicide.” The picture of the man on the screen behind the news anchor showed a man with a fringe of gray hair around a bald pate. He had a stubborn set to his jaw and intelligent eyes, but a hard glint made me think he wasn’t the trusting sort.
I met Teag’s gaze. “He’s never killed men before,” I said. “Breaking pattern again. Why?”
Teag went back to his computer. “Oh, hell,” he murmured. I came around to peer at the screen. “He was the lead detective on the Smiley Killer case,” he said. The search results showed a series of commendations and accolades, plus charity involvement after his retirement. Teag’s cursor hovered over an old headshot that showed Walker in his forties, probably around the time of the killings.
He looked up at me, and I saw that he had paled. “I’ve seen him bef
ore, Cassidy. That dream I told you about? The one I’ve had since I was a kid? This is one of the two men who keep asking me what I saw.”
I swore under my breath. “How is that possible? Wouldn’t you remember it if you had witnessed a serial killer at work?”
Teag stood and began to pace, running his hands through his hair. “I would have been seven years old,” he said. “How much do you remember from when you were seven?”
“I think I’d remember a murder.”
Teag’s expressions and gestures made me think he was carrying on a lively conversation with himself. “Maybe. If you knew that’s what it was. But what if you didn’t really see much? What if you didn’t know what was going on? Suppose they wanted to know if I’d seen someone in an alley, or leaving a building. It wouldn’t mean anything to me, wouldn’t be the same as having seen a dead body or actually seen someone die. It would be scary because strangers kept asking questions I couldn’t answer.”
“Who was the other man?”
Teag looked up at me, eyes wide and a little panicky. “I don’t know. A cop, maybe? Another detective? That was twenty years ago. He could have moved away, died from natural causes.”
“If he’s still in Charleston, he’s a prime target,” I said. “And maybe you are, too.”
Teag dropped into a chair as the realization sank in. “There’s nothing to say I told the detective anything useful,” he said, and I could tell he was breathing fast. “Just because I got scared over being questioned doesn’t mean I actually knew anything.”
He dove for his computer, and I guessed he was hacking back into the police records. We sat together in silence as his fingers flew over the keyboard, and then he sat back with a sound like he’d been punched in the gut.
“What?”
“Detective Walker interviewed T.L., a boy who was waiting for a school bus near the alley where Roberta Warde’s body was found, close to the estimated time of the murder. He saw nothing,” Teag read from the report.
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