by Raven Snow
Ben’s brow creased with a frown. He said nothing. He just stared at Rowen and waited for her to finish.
“I talked to Justin,” said Rowen, letting that hang there for a moment before continuing. “I know you were there.”
“I already told the police I was there,” Ben assured them, his expression impassive and difficult to read. “I’m not sure what you’re implying.”
“Yes, you do,” said Eric, leaning back and crossing his arms over his chest. “Rowen isn’t exactly subtle.”
Ben cracked a smile at that. “No, she’s not,” he agreed.
“Did you see Lindsay that night?” asked Rowen, not letting either of them get her off track.
“Maybe,” Ben said. “I probably did. I’m not sure I remember specifically when or what she was even wearing.”
That was a lie. Rowen could feel it. Ben put on a good front, but she could see right through it. “What were you doing there?”
“I was invited to the party,” Ben said, as if that should be obvious enough without explaining. “Parties aren’t illegal, you know. A cop at a party might be a bit of a buzz kill, but I’m still allowed to go to them.”
“Do you remember anyone suspicious at the party?” asked Rowen.
That was as far as Ben was willing to take this, apparently. “All right,” he said, cutting her off there. “You don’t get to know details of an active investigation. You know, I thought you called me out here because you had information for me.”
“I do,” said Rowen. “I spoke with the deceased.”
That did get Ben’s attention. “When?” he asked, sitting up a little straighter in his booth.
“This morning,” said Eric.
Ben made a face at that. “You’re telling me you talked to a ghost?”
“Oh, come on.” Rowen wasn’t in the mood to go through the different stages of skepticism. “You dated me, remember? You know that this stuff is real.”
“It’s been a while,” said Ben. His expression had changed somewhat, though. Even if time had dulled his memories, he still had some idea of what the Greensmith girls were capable of. “What did this ghost tell you?”
“She pointed me toward Justin. How else would I know to go speak with him?” Rowen asked.
Ben looked unconvinced. “There are a number of ways that you could have found that out.”
Rowen supposed that wasn’t very convincing. It also wasn’t evidence worth calling Ben out here for. She wanted to mention David. She was beginning to regret bringing Eric out here with her. It was David that she really wanted to ask about right now.
No, she told herself. That would be a bad idea. Making David a suspect this soon would be doing no one any favors.
“What’s going on?” asked Rowen, trying a different tactic. If Ben wasn’t going to offer her any information, and if she had nothing to offer him, she was going to just be blunt.
“What do you mean?” asked Ben, sounding absolutely exhausted— like he regretted coming out here to meet with her.
“This isn’t like you.” Rowen liked to think she still knew Ben pretty well. It had been a while, but the last time they had been around each other, he’d still seemed like very much the same person. “You love your job— or you used to. You were so happy when you made detective.”
“How would you know?” asked Ben, raising an eyebrow at her. “We don’t exactly talk often.”
“I just know,” Rowen insisted. “You’re acting strange.”
Ben looked at her for a little while— just studied her face like he was considering something. “I’m having some problems at work,” he admitted with a shrug. “Things could be better, especially with this investigation. I have a lot on my plate and a lot on my mind…” Ben trailed off as if he was considering telling her something. Rowen waited, hoping he would finally trust her with a missing piece of this puzzle. Instead, he just shook his head. “It’ll sort itself out. Now, if you don’t have any news for me, can we just eat a nice meal?”
What followed was one of the most awkward dinners Rowen had ever been a part of. Still, she didn’t regret calling Ben out here. Now, she knew for a fact that he knew more than he was letting on. She tried to get a read on him before he left. It didn’t quite work out that way, unfortunately.
“Well, that wasn’t at all awkward,” said Eric, once they were alone.
“Oh, hush.” Rowen ordered herself a real margarita. She’d earned it.
Chapter Ten
Rowen and Eric were the first ones home. Her cousins, it seemed, were still at the office. She had called them a few moments before they parked in the yard. They were having a late night with the Ouija board. If Rowen knew them well (and she did) they were also making a bit of a party out of it. She didn’t really mind.
A low fog of incense drifted out the door when Rowen opened it. Eric began to cough, but Rowen wasn’t at all surprised. This happened sometimes. “Watch out for naked old people,” she warned.
“What are you talking about?” asked Eric, scanning his surroundings as if one was about to swoop from the shadows and attack him.
“They’re doing a spell,” Rowen explained. “Sometimes, they do that sort of thing sky clad. That means they get naked.”
“Oh, man.” Eric shook his head and fixed his gave on the floor. “Please don’t tell me my parents joined in on that, too.”
“I hope not,” said Rowen, holding her breath every time she rounded a corner. “That’s way more of your parents than I want to see.”
Rowen’s aunts and Eric’s parents were in the living room. There were seated in a circle with candles lit. They weren’t naked, thank goodness, but they had donned some very tacky spangled robes.
“Oh hello, son,” said Mr. Richardson.
“We’re doing a ritual for money!” said Mrs. Richardson, beaming.
“Concentrate,” said Lydia.
“We need quiet,” said Nadine.
“Sorry,” Eric said, quickly. “You guys carry on… Where’s David?”
“He went into town,” said Mr. Richardson.
“What?” Rowen didn’t like the sound of that at all.
“You just let him go?” Eric demanded, ignoring another call for silence from Nadine.
Mrs. Richardson spread her hands as if puzzled. “Honey, he’s a grown man. What were we supposed to do?”
“We need quiet,” Lydia warned.
“Okay! We’re going!” Rowen took Eric by the arm and led him right back out the front door. Sure enough, David’s car was not there. Rowen wasn’t sure how she hadn’t noticed before when they pulled in. “Darn it.”
“It’s not a huge deal,” Eric said, sounding confused by her reaction. “Hopefully, he won’t come home drunk. If he does, well… We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”
“Can you call him?” asked Rowen. She was going to have to tell Eric about what she’d found out today, wasn’t she? It was looking exceedingly likely.
Eric gave Rowen an odd look, but he pulled out his phone. He dialed. It took a few rings, but David answered. “Hey,” he said, keeping his voice impassive. “Where are you at?” He listened for a few moments. “Uh-huh… When do you think you’ll be back?” He listened again. “Because you can’t stay out all night. Mom and Dad will worry, and there’s no hotel you can check into around here at this hour… David! No, you absolutely can’t sleep in your car… No! Da−” Eric stopped talking. He glared at his phone. “He hung up,” he told Rowen, annoyed.
“Do you know where he is?” asked Rowen.
Eric gave her an odd look, but answered anyway. “He said he was seeing a guy about something or another… I sure hope that doesn’t mean drugs.”
Rowen considered those words. She considered where David had been the night before, before he’d driven right up to their house and into their garden. “I think I might know what that means.” Rowen had her suspicions, and she bet they were right.
“What are you talking about?” Eric a
sked, giving her a wary look.
“I’ll explain while we drive.” She headed for her car. “Come on. I’m driving.”
“What are you not telling me?” Eric asked the moment he’d sat down in the passenger seat.
Rowen started up the car and pulled out onto the road. She definitely needed to tell Eric. She just wasn’t sure where to start. “You remember what Lindsay said.”
“Spelled out, you mean.”
“Don’t be smart.” Rowen chewed on the inside of her mouth for a moment. “I think you know what I’m talking about, right?”
“What?” Eric asked. “When she spelled out the word, ‘him?’ That could mean any ‘him.’ It could be that Justin guy you visited— which I still don’t approve of, by the way. He could be your murderer.”
“The ‘him’ she mentioned doesn’t have to be the murderer,” Rowen pointed out. “It could just be someone she saw at the party.”
“David wasn’t at the party, though.”
Rowen said nothing. She kept her eyes on the road.
“David wasn’t at the party,” Eric repeated, puzzled. He groaned suddenly. “Oh, man. He was at the party, wasn’t he? That’s where he got so messed up.”
Rowen nodded sheepishly. “Justin told us.”
“And why didn’t you tell me?” Eric didn’t sound thrilled. He wasn’t mad, necessarily, but he wasn’t happy, either.
“The timing didn’t feel right.” That was a lie, and Rowen felt awful for saying it. She hadn’t said anything because she was afraid of what would happen if this actually led to something. “You’re not here for long… I wanted the time we spent together to be as enjoyable as it possibly could be. Your brother getting arrested seemed like it would put a damper on that.”
Eric was quiet for a while as they drove. He stared out the window, deep in thought. That wasn’t a good sign. “You can’t just keep stuff like that from me,” said Eric. “That sort of thing— especially things that directly involve me like this… You can’t just keep that stuff from me.”
Rowen cringed. Was this it? Was this their first fight as a couple? She had been dreading it. “I didn’t mean to.”
“Yes, you did,” Eric said, which was true if she thought about it. “The things you don’t think about are stuff like you going off today to question Justin without me. It comes back to the same problem, though. If we’re going to make this work, you have to think about us as a team.”
Rowen wasn’t sure what to say to that, so she said nothing. She regretted keeping quiet. The silence that followed was nearly unbearable. It quickly grew much too heavy to cut through, and turning on the radio felt like an obvious attempt to have anything else fill the silence.
Fortunately, the closer they got, the more Rowen’s mind went back to her work. Something told her she was right about David being at Justin’s. If she was wrong… well, the ride home was going to be even more awkward.
Soon, they were approaching the house. Rowen turned into the driveway, and her headlights immediately fell across the back of David’s car. Well, that was a bit of a relief. At least they hadn’t driven all the way out here for nothing.
Beside her, Eric took a deep breath. Rowen realized he was nervous. That was fair. Neither of them knew what to expect in that house. Parties aside, it was pretty quiet out here. Given her past experience with Justin, she expected him to be looking out the window at them as they approached. There were still lights on inside, but no one went to them.
Instead, the closer they got, the more they heard coming from inside. Rowen and Eric exchanged looks to make sure that they were both hearing the same thing. It sounded like a struggle.
They rushed for the door. Fortunately, it was unlocked. Eric burst right in. Rowen lingered behind, taking a more cautious approach.
The inside of the house was as much of a mess as the yard was. It might have been a nice place before the party, but it seemed that the house still hadn’t been cleaned up. Rowen was ankle deep in beer bottles and red plastic cups as she made her way toward the noise.
There was indeed a fight going on. Justin and David were grappling with one another on the floor. David was on top and seemed to have the upper hand against the rather scrawny Justin. Still, given the blood pouring from David’s nose, the other guy had clearly gotten some good shots in.
Eric was already trying to get between them. “What in the− Stop it!” He pulled his brother off with ease, like this wasn’t the first time he’d dragged him from a fight.
Justin made a move to go after David now that he was restrained. Rowen picked that moment to jump into action. “I’ll call the cops!” she warned, pulling out her cell phone. “Back up, both of you!”
“Go ahead!” shouted Justin, his adrenaline still pumping. He looked at her with wild eyes. “That’s what this is all about! He doesn’t want me to call the police because he murdered Lindsay!” There were tears in Justin’s eyes. A hand flew to his mouth as he was overcome with emotion. “He tried to pay me off not to say anything. He wanted me to act like he wasn’t even here!”
Rowen looked at David. He had gone all but limp in Eric’s arms. His gaze was fixed on the floor. He seemed lost, defeated.
“Get out!” shouted Justin, as if remembering suddenly that they had no right to be there. “All of you get out or I’ll call the police!”
Rowen didn’t wait to find out if he was bluffing or not. She motioned to Eric to hurry and follow her out the front door. Eric did just that, dragging his brother along.
“What’s gotten into you?” Eric demanded, still holding his brother firmly by the arm once they were outside. “What are you doing going off in the middle of the night to pick fights, huh?”
David said nothing. He just continued to stare off into the distance. He either had a lot to think about right now, or he was deeply ashamed. Maybe both.
“Give me your keys,” said Eric, holding out his hand. It didn’t seem like David was under the influence, but that probably just made all of this more worrying.
David didn’t argue with his brother. He fished his keys from his pocket and handed them over.
“Get in the car,” Eric instructed next.
“Get in my car,” Rowen amended. She offered Eric a smile when he gave her a questioning look. “You’re angry,” she told him. “Maybe it’s best if you two weren’t trapped in a car together the whole ride home.”
“It’s fine,” said David. It was the first thing he’d said to them since they got here. He headed for the passenger side of his own car.
“No,” called Eric. “Ride with Rowen. I might kill you. We’re going to have a long talk when we get back to the house.”
David didn’t argue with that, either. He headed for Rowen’s car.
This was going to be pretty weird. Rowen had no illusions about that. It still seemed like the right call, though. She would worry if she had to follow Eric and David home the whole way. Besides, she had a few questions for David.
“What were you doing out here?” she asked, as soon as they were inside and both doors were closed.
David said nothing. It seemed he was going to try to go back to just being silent.
Rowen started the engine. “I hope you’re not going to sit over there and sulk the whole time. You’re not a little kid. That’s going to get old.” She pulled out and got onto the road. Eric had pulled out ahead of them.
“It doesn’t matter,” said David, turning to look out the window.
“It does,” Rowen insisted. She tried to think of a new approach to getting information from him. “I really love your brother, you know?” Out of the corner of her eye, Rowen saw David shrug. “I don’t know if things are going to work out between us. My family has a pretty spotty history of relationships. I’m hoping this one works out, though— and I’m hoping that’ll eventually make us something like family.”
David glanced over at her with an eyebrow raised, like he was fairly unimpressed with that wish.
&nbs
p; “The point is,” Rowen continued, undeterred. “I would do anything for my family. If they’re in trouble, I want to hear about it. If there’s something you did, I want to know about that, too. I want to help you.”
David looked back out the window. For a moment, Rowen was sure he was going to go back to just ignoring her. Instead, he gave a sigh. “I didn’t try to offer him money,” he said.
That was something. Was he finally going to open up to her? Rowen kept on that. “What happened, then?”
