Black Arts & Bones (Familiar Kitten Mysteries Book 11)

by Sara Bourgeois

  “What is sitting there, though?” I asked. “If she was living in a tent, there can’t be much left after all this time.”

  “That’s the thing. It’s a camper van. It’s an RV. And it’s just sitting there while your husband and Jeremy negotiate with the FBI over who gets jurisdiction,” Dorian said.

  “So, we’d need to go now,” I said. “Before they work it out.”

  “Mom?” I wasn’t sure what I was asking her. For permission to go? To watch Laney? For advice?

  “Do you want the mom answer or the Brighton answer?” she asked. “Because as your mom, I’d tell you to go rest on the couch. As Brighton, I know exactly why you feel like you need to go.”

  “I don’t need to go,” I said. “I know that.”

  “Because Thorn and the FBI will solve the case,” Mom said.

  “They will,” I said. “This one is right up their alley. It doesn’t involve us.”

  “But doesn’t it?” Mom asked.

  “You sound like you’re trying to talk me into it,” I said with a chuckle.

  “Because I know you’re going to be absolutely miserable to be around today if you don’t go,” Mom said. “There’s a supernatural element to this case, so it falls under the purview of the Coven. That’s all the reason you need. If you want a reason.”

  “We’ll go check out the RV,” I said. “It couldn’t hurt to go take a look.”

  “I just want to sleep,” Meri said.

  “It’s okay. You can stay with Mom and Laney. I’ll be all right,” I said.

  That was all it took. He jumped up onto the arm of the sofa and made himself comfortable. I asked Mom if she needed anything while I was out, and she said she’d call Dad if she did.

  I took a bottle of Tylenol and a Thermos of soup with me. Mom said it was in case I started feeling poorly while we were out.

  Chapter Six

  Once we were in the car and on our way to the campgrounds, Dorian opened up a little. “I don’t have any doubts that your husband is capable as sheriff, but I have my doubts that he’ll be allowed to solve this case,” he said.

  “What? What do you mean?” I asked.

  “The FBI is going to come in swinging their big… badges, and then drop the ball. I can almost feel it,” Dorian said. “Once it gets out who she was, it’s not going to be a priority.”

  “What do you mean, Dorian? You’re being cryptic.”

  “Well, when I found out who she was, I started poking around her social media. More like her former friends’ social media. It still amazes me what kids just put out on the internet, but I guess it makes sense when they are talking smack about a girl they didn’t particularly like.”

  “I’m still not getting it,” I said.

  “All of her former friends were big into the church, but not like a regular church. One of those super strict ones that pretty much cuts themselves off from most of society,” Dorian said.

  “Except for to post all of someone’s private business on the internet?” I said.

  “Yeah,” he answered. “Anyway, Alicia was gay. She ran away from home because her parents were trying to force her into a conversion therapy camp before she turned eighteen.”

  “Jeez,” I said and let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. “Those still exist?”

  “Anytime people get the chance to be awful, they take it,” Dorian said.

  “To their own kids?” I asked.

  “Some of them… especially to their own kids,” he replied.

  The tone of his voice and the way Dorian’s jaw clenched told me there was something personal in all of this.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” I asked.

  “Just a boy from when I was in high school,” Dorian said. “My first boyfriend, I’d guess you’d say. Long before I met Isaac. His father was a preacher and his mother was a narcissistic nightmare. They put him in conversion therapy when he came out, and he didn’t make it.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said.

  “He was the seventeenth boy to commit suicide there over the camp’s thirty-year history. His death got the place shut down. So, at least there’s that. I think it would help Joey to know that his death saved other kids, but I wish it wouldn’t have taken that,” Dorian said. “You okay? You look pale and kind of gray.”

  I pulled down the visor mirror and looked. He was right, but I felt okay. “I’m fine. Probably just dehydrated. I’ll drink my soup, if you don’t mind.”

  “Go ahead,” Dorian said. “Anyway, I’ve been seeing him.”

  “You’ve been seeing Joey?” I asked and wiped a little dribble of chicken soup off of my chin with the back of my hand.

  “Yeah, I’ve been seeing his ghost,” Dorian said. “This is going to sound nuts, but it’s how I knew to turn the police scanner on. I saw him standing by it.”

  “I thought you probably kept that thing on all of the time,” I said.

  “I used to, but sometimes it bothered Buffy. So, I had it unplugged. I was working on one of my fiction books, and I looked up to see Joey standing by the scanner. I felt this weird impulse to hug him. Maybe not weird. We never really got to say goodbye. Anyway, I got up and walked over there but he vanished. I plugged the scanner in, and that’s when I learned the stuff about Alicia.”

  I would have talked to him about it more, but we arrived at the campground office. Dorian pulled into a parking spot, got out of the car, and consulted the map hanging on an old wooden sign.

  “Got it,” he said as he hurried back into the car. “I don’t think anyone saw me.”

  “I wasn’t aware this was a covert mission,” I said.

  “Of course it is. We don’t want anyone to know we’re here. Especially not the office, but I don’t think there was anyone in there.”

  “You’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking,” I said.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Dorian asked.

  “I’m great,” I said. “Feeling even better than when we left.”

  It took a few minutes to get to the campsite, and we rode in silence. I stared out the window, watching the trees go by, and Dorian focused on finding our destination.

  When we got there, I understood why no one really wanted the campsite. It was one of the furthest from the main road, but it wasn’t close to anything interesting. It literally felt like the forest swallowed you whole, and perhaps that’s why Amelia wanted it.

  “Where would she have gotten this RV?” I asked Dorian as we got out of the car.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I hope the answer is inside.”

  “Did they mention on the scanner if she stole it from her parents or something?” I asked.

  “Nothing like that,” he said. “They didn’t say, but it’s possible. Or she could have stolen it from someone else.”

  “I don’t want to assume she was a thief,” I decided out loud.

  “True, but we have to consider all of the possibilities,” Dorian returned.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “For what?”

  “That something like this is happening so close to home,” I said with a shrug. “I know it can’t be easy.”

  “Well, I’ve got good friends and an amazing husband now, so it’s going to be okay. But it won’t be for Amelia, and maybe helping her find justice will help me work out some stuff in my head,” Dorian said. “Should we go inside?”

  I looked over at the RV. It was an older model, and you could tell that even before it sat out in the elements for months, it hadn’t been in the best shape. It was also possibly a murder victim’s last home. I was about to tell Dorian that we shouldn’t go in. I didn’t want to mess up a potential crime scene and prevent law enforcement from solving the crime.

  But then I saw her. Standing off in the trees was the ghost of the young woman I’d seen in my dream just before I woke up screaming.

  She waved at me. It was the kind of shy, timid wave you offer someone when you’re not sure if they are a
friend but you hope that they are. My stomach clenched. She looked like a girl on her first day at a new school.

  Then the ghost froze as if she heard something I didn’t hear. She slowly turned her head around to look over her shoulder, and I tried to follow her eyes. But I didn’t see anything. When she turned back, the look of sheer terror on her face was enough to make me shudder. Then she vanished, and I couldn’t stop shivering.

  “Kinsley, are you okay?” Dorian reached out and grabbed my hand. “Oh, wow, you’re burning up.”

  I kept shaking. I was so cold that I wasn’t sure I’d ever feel warm again. “Is my fever back?” I asked, and I could swear my teeth chattered a bit.

  “I’m pretty sure it is. I think we should go,” Dorian said. “We need to get you home. This was a bad idea.”

  “It’s not, and we’re not leaving yet. We’ve come this far, and this is our only chance to look around. I’ll be all right,” I said. “Um, I could just take some more Tylenol.”

  “You can’t,” he said and shook his head. “You can only have that every eight hours. It’s way too soon.”

  “What could it hurt?” I asked.

  “Have you been living under a rock? It could destroy your liver. That stuff is safe as long as you don’t take too much,” he said.

  “I’ve just never needed it,” I said.

  “You could take ibuprofen. Do you have any? It’s okay for you to take both of them at the same time,” Dorian said.

  “I don’t. I mean, I don’t keep stuff like that in my purse. I’ve never needed it,” I said.

  “Wait, I have a bottle in my glove box. I keep some for Isaac. He gets migraines,” Dorian said.

  I stood studying the RV while Dorian grabbed the medicine from his car. When he returned, he handed me two small orange pills. I swallowed them and noticed a sharp stab in my throat.

  “You winced,” Dorian said.

  “It hurt a little when I swallowed those,” I said.

  “Huh… Okay. Well, that could be a sore throat, or it could just be raw from your congestion,” he said. “We should go home.”

  “Let’s look around first,” I said. “I took those pills. I’ll take it easy, I swear.”

  He studied me for a moment, but I could see on his face how much Dorian wanted to go into the RV. We were tantalizingly close, and whether or not he felt a personal connection to the victim was irrelevant. Dorian was a reporter, and those instincts had already kicked in.

  “All right, but if you start to feel like you can’t handle this, you have to tell me,” Dorian said.

  “I will, I swear,” I said.

  We approached the RV, and Dorian went up the rickety metal steps to the door first. I’d wondered if it was unlocked, but Dorian was able to open the door easily. It hadn’t even been latched all the way.

  He opened the door and stepped inside. I stood on the last metal step and scanned the woods around us quickly before following him inside.

  Other than the layer of dust on everything, it almost looked like someone had just stepped out. There was a half-full bottle of Coke on the dinette table and a book turned upside down to hold the page. I crossed the few feet between myself and the table and saw a small leather object on the bench.

  “It’s her purse,” I said and picked it up.

  Inside I found a wallet and confirmed the RV had been Alicia Holland’s last home.

  “Is that a driver’s license?” Dorian asked as I studied her picture.

  Her face was already familiar to me. I’d seen it in a dream and outside in the woods, and I’d known it was her before I knew.

  “It is, and this was definitely Alicia’s place,” I said and handed Dorian the license.

  While he looked it over, I continued searching her purse. It felt like a gross violation, but there was probably more information in her handbag than in the rest of the RV. We keep what is most precious to us close, so it meant that something significant had happened if Alicia left without her purse.

  Besides the license, her walled contained a bus pass and three dollars. There was a picture of a blonde girl too tucked into the section under the license holder.

  “You were on Alicia’s social media, does this girl look familiar?” I asked and handed Dorian the picture.

  He studied it for a moment. “She was in some pictures with Alicia. Arms around each other and smiling, but they weren’t couple-type pictures. It was more in groups where everyone was doing the same things.”

  “Then it was a secret to more than just her parents,” I said. “I would maybe think it was just a picture of a friend tucked in her wallet, but it’s the only one.”

  “Yeah, and they obviously had more friends,” Dorian said. “Both of them seemed popular. If you can judge that sort of thing from a picture, and most of the time you can…”

  “You don’t think this girl could have had something to do with it?” I asked. “Maybe jealousy or revenge for outing her? When Alicia’s parents found out, it might have caused problems for this girl too. Especially if they were all involved with the same church.”

  “I’ll get her name when I get home and look closer at her social media,” Dorian said. “So what’s the potential theory?”

  “That Alicia invited this girl here to see her. Maybe she ran but missed her too much, so she found a way to contact her.”

  “And then the girlfriend killed her?” Dorian asked.

  “Maybe. If it was revenge,” I said with an uncertain shrug. “Perhaps they got into a fight, or it was an accident. Even if Alicia’s death was an accident, this girl might have been scared to tell anyone. Simply being here might have been a huge risk.”

  “I’ll find out who she is. Maybe we can call her or message her online,” Dorian said. “She might talk to us if she doesn’t have to be seen with us.”

  “I don’t know if that will be necessary,” I said. “I’m speculating pretty wildly here based off a photo in a wallet.”

  “A photo that was probably her significant other,” Dorian said. “Isn’t that where the cops look first?”

  “It is, but… Do you still want to be involved if that’s the case?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?” Dorian asked.

  “Well, you want to solve this case to get justice because Alicia is a gay teen runaway. What does it do to your motivation if it was her girlfriend who did it?”

  Dorian opened his mouth to respond right away, and I wondered if I’d said something super offensive. Then, he closed it and rubbed his chin.

  “I want to clear her then,” he said. “Because if it gets out that these two were involved, and the cops look at the significant other first, they might destroy this girl too.”

  “That makes sense,” I said. “And I’m sorry if I said something offensive.”

  “I’m gay, Kinsley. I’m not a delicate flower,” Dorian said with a chuckle.

  “I mean, you kinda are,” I teased.

  “Good that you still have your sense of humor,” he said. “Let’s look around and see what else we find.”

  But there wasn’t much else in the RV. There were a few changes of clothes and very little food in the kitchen. She had a sketchbook full of drawings on her bed. I shouldn’t have done it, but I picked it up and put it in my bag. I told myself that it probably wasn’t evidence anyway, and Alicia wouldn’t have wanted her parents to end up with it.

  “I think I need to sit down,” I said as I joined Dorian back out in the living room area.

  I’d begun to feel a little lightheaded.

  “Let’s get you out to the car and back home. Your mother and husband will kill me if you get sicker. I never should have gone through with this,” Dorian said.

  “Yes, but we have a lead,” I said as I swooned.

  My hand shot out and grabbed the edge of the dinette table. It was then I realized that Dorian and I had left our fingerprints all over everything.

  “Our fingerprints,” I said.

  “Well, w
e haven’t touched much in here, and I’ve been wiping them off,” Dorian said.