Aphrodite Needs an Alibi (Aphrodite Needs a Clue Book 1)

by Regan Claire

  I can do nothing but stare at him. Love can be won and it can be given, but it can never be bought.

  And it should never be a cage, which is what this marriage feels like.

  I reach a hand up to caress his cheek and give him what I can. He knows by now that this is a temporary fix, but he’s desperate for it. Each time I give him the feeling of being loved, his desire for it grows. He’s an addict by now, worse than Dionysus’ followers, except that what he craves most is me.

  “Go on to work, Husband. I shall be here when you return.” I kiss him, and can feel the tension leave his body as the effects of what I do take hold over him.

  Finally, he leaves, but I still feel as though I’m holding my breath.

  Love isn’t meant to be shackled. It’s what I tell myself when my lover walks into the home my husband built for me, dangerously soon after Hephaistos leaves.

  Love doesn’t feel like suffocating chains, and as Ares pulls me into an embrace, I finally feel as if I can breathe again.

  Needs an Alibi

  I don’t know how Eros hold of her address. When I asked, he mysteriously said that he “knew people.” I can’t believe I agreed to do this, but here we are: pulling into Charlotte’s driveway.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” I ask, reluctant to get out of the car.

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  Yeah, go home. I don’t say it though because I already know Eros will ignore me. He’s already left the car and is halfway up the walkway to the front door before I can even unbuckle.

  When he picked me up I was still groggy from yet another weird dream, and frankly a bit taken aback by his choice of outfit, straight out of a noir film, complete with beige trench coat and fedora. He’s taking the detective thing a bit too seriously if you ask me.

  “Wait up,” I tell Eros as I half jog to catch up.

  “Isn’t this fun?” he asks after ringing the doorbell.

  “We haven’t done anything yet,” I whisper to him. My nerves are going crazy. Last time I saw this woman she waved a knife at me, and here I am, voluntarily at her home.

  She might be a murderer, and I already know that I bring out the stabby side in her.

  My stomach churns. Eros reaches over and rings the doorbell again, as he bounces lightly on his toes.

  “Maybe she isn’t home,” I say, hope blooming in my chest like a flower in spring.

  “Let’s go around back,” the eager beaver says.

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “She might be at the back of the house and not be able to hear the doorbell.”

  “Fine, let’s hurry.”

  We walk around the house. The back door is open. I can smell the stink of her home this close. Gross.

  “It definitely smells like bad-guy’s lair,” Eros tells me, before he knocks on the screen door.

  “Hello!” he calls through the screen after a few minutes of no response before opening the door and walking slowly in.

  “What are you doing?” I ask him in a loud whisper.

  “Going inside.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” It’s too late, because he’s already inside. I follow him in but grab his arm before he can go too far.

  “C’mon! What if she has one of those murder walls in the living room? All we need to do is snap a few pictures, and boom: you’re in the clear,” he says, looking around at the exposed walls.

  “Or I get arrested for breaking and entering,” I whisper.

  “Where’s your sense of adventure? Plus, if the door is open I don’t think it’s technically considered breaking and entering. Just entering. We just want to talk to her. That’s not a crime.”

  Is that right? It doesn’t sound right. “I’m pretty sure it’s still illegal. What if she’s not even here?”

  “Hello, Charlotte?!” Eros shouts. I freeze. The only sound I hear is my own heartbeat. “Must not be here then. Good, she won’t mind if I help myself to a drink. I wonder if she has any bottled water. I’m parched.” He pulls out of my grasp and heads deeper into the house. I gape after him like a fish on land before scuttling to catch up, again.

  “This cannot be a good idea! The woman tried to stab me and then told the police that I murdered Mick. What if she comes back while we’re inside? What if she is the murderer? I’ll be next on her list for sure!” The stench is worse inside, despite the house looking relatively clean.

  “Good! If she tries to kill you then the cops will definitely realize you’re innocent.”

  “Eros! I don’t really want to play murder victim.” Eros stops so suddenly I actually run into him. Maybe I finally got through to him.

  “Okay, then I have good news for you. I don’t think Charlotte will be playing murder suspect anytime soon.”

  I move to the side to see why he stopped. It takes a minute to realize what I’m looking at.

  At first it’s easy. That’s Charlotte on the kitchen floor…but why is she on the kitchen floor? Oh my god, why is there a knife sticking into her sternum? What do I do? Is she dead? She looks dead. She’s face up, eyes wide in what looks like fear. Her mouth is open like a fish’s, stuck in a silent scream. I’m going to throw up. I should probably make sure she’s dead before I throw up though. What if she’s alive? She can’t be alive.

  Please be alive.

  I get closer, hoping to see her breathe. She doesn’t. I’m breathing enough for both of us, though I think the technical term is hyperventilate. I reach for her wrist with the intention of taking her pulse, but touching her makes my stomach churn again. I barely put a finger on her before I pull back. She feels cold and hard, like plastic.

  “April, don’t touch the blood,” Eros tells me while he pulls out his phone. I look numbly down where my knee is about two inches away from a red pool of Charlotte’s former life force. I stand back up and scurry away, then cross my arms across my body. I feel like there should be more of a mess. A chair on its side, a cup smashed on the floor, anything else to show the violence that occurred.

  I guess a dead body is evidence enough.

  “Eros, we need to call the cops,” I tell him, but he’s on the phone. Who is he calling at a time like this? We just found a dead person.

  “I’m calling them right now. Let’s go back outside, okay?”

  I nod my head, because outside sounds good, so good that I actually beat him to the door, let myself out, take two gulping breaths of fresh air…then vomit in the bushes next to the door.

  “Why don’t you just ask him if we can leave?” Eros asks me, referring to the detective who has finally left our side long enough to speak with the CSI woman. It’s been about an hour since the cops came and with them, Detective Montgomery. I guess this is still his case. I’m just glad that Detective Polias isn’t here.

  “I don’t think it works like that,” I tell him.

  “You just need to ask nicely,” he says. The way he says it, almost as if he knows that I could ask nicely and probably get us released. Well, ask nicely and use my powers. There’s no way that Eros can know that. How could he? Eros is looking at me, like he’s daring me to ask him something.

  I’m saved from figuring out what to say because the detective walks back to us.

  “Walk me through what happened again,”he asks.

  “We’ve gone over this twice now, Detective,” Eros says.

  “My partner will be here soon. In fact, I just talked to her and she insists I bring you back to the station. Minerva doesn’t seem to like you, so I’m sure you understand why working with me is a good thing.”

  “Minerva Polias is your partner?” Eros looks around as if afraid Polias might already be there, then looks at me, asking me something with his eyes, but I don’t know what. I shake my head, unsure what to do. Surely he doesn’t mean…doesn’t know….

  He rolls his eyes.

  “So, you came here. Why?” Montgomery asks for the third time.

  “As we said, we came over to ta
lk to her. You said I could be in danger. I just wanted to figure out from whom.”

  “There’s a police report stating she attacked you with a knife. You thought it was a good idea to come visit her at her home to ask her questions about a murder?”

  I shrug, head down. It does sound pretty dumb, and that’s without admitting out loud that we thought she was the murderer.

  “I think it’s best if we do go down to the station. If doing this job has taught me anything, it’s that there are no coincidences on a murder investigation, and my partner has a bad feeling about you. I’ve also learned to listen to her.” He’s looking at me when he says it. I don’t know what to say.

  “We’ll be happy to meet you at the station. How about first thing Monday morning?” Eros says. He has a hand on Montgomery’s shoulder. The detective looks down at Eros’s hand, then back at him. Eros is brave, because there’s no way I would lay a hand on a person looking at me like that—especially when he’s carrying a gun.

  “How about now,” he responds.

  “You know, we really would, but that lady looks like she really needs to talk to you.” Eros points to the CSI lady he was talking to with that little finger gun that I saw him do at the club. The good detective turns his head to look at the woman and seems stuck for a moment. She’s looking back at him, looking equally stuck. Detective Montgomery shakes his head and turns back to us.

  “I, uh…” he stutters, then turns to look at the woman again.

  “Detective, it’s not like you suspect us. You already got our alibis for the murder time. There’s no way April and I could have been in two places at once.”

  He doesn’t look like he’s listening, but he must be. He turns to look at me, then Eros. “Monday morning at 8:00a.m. If you’re not there, I’ll have you in cuffs.” Then he abruptly turns and walks away.

  My jaw drops, but Eros just grabs me by the elbow and gently leads me to his car.

  “That was weird, right?” I say after buckling up.

  “Yeah it was. It would have been a lot less obvious if you had just helped me out there a little.”

  “By asking nicely?” I say in air quotes.

  “You know what I mean.”

  I’m silent. I can’t know what he means, because if he means what I think he means, then he knows about me. No one can possibly know about me.

  “Well, it ended up being fine. Whatever he and that CSI woman needed to talk about must have been important. All you did was point at her and—.”

  “And what? What happened when I pointed?” Eros asks in a rush, like he’s frustrated with me.

  I shake my head. It was like he pointed and made her look at him. I don’t say it out loud though, because it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense the way the things I can do don’t make sense. I’m silent, and there’s a weight in the air as if Eros is waiting for me to ask him something, or tell him something, or both. There are words on the tip of my tongue, I just don’t know which ones. The silence stretches while I try to figure out what to say, and how to say it.

  Finally he sighs. “Sorry April, this is really stressful and I’m worried that whatever lunatic is doing this will go after you next, and you don’t know who…”

  “Who what?”

  He pauses before answering. “Who could be doing this.”

  I have a feeling that isn’t what he originally planned to say, but am afraid to ask. Am I ready for the answers? Besides, the car has stopped, but we’re not at my house.

  “Where are we?”

  “A bar I know of. Luckily it was right down the street. I don’t know about you, but I could use a drink.”

  The bar in question is at the end of a strip mall, next to a liquor store that’s next to a grocery store. A hole in the wall that, judging by the number of cars parked in front of it, is a local hangout.

  “Actually, a drink sounds fantastic.”

  Needs Some Nectar

  It’s dark inside, dark enough that I stop as soon as I walk in to give my eyes time to adjust. There’s a smokiness here too. Not from cigarettes, not these days, but it’s like the air still remembers the good ole days when prolonged breathing in the right room could kill you even if you didn’t smoke. Eros pushes me forward, but I have to be careful because the floor is sticky enough to grab hold of one of my shoes if I’m not deliberate with my steps.

  We’re met with silence upon entering. Not because there aren’t any people inside—it is just as busy as I thought it would be from the number of cars outside. There are at least a dozen pairs of eyes on us as we walk toward the bar, making me think the silence is on account of our arrival. I don’t make eye contact while I let Eros lead me to a stool off to the corner of the bar. Glad I’m not wearing a skirt, I take a seat and push to the side so my back is against the wall.

  That’s when I notice the lack of women here. I’m not the only one, but the other two or three that I see are paired with someone else. It’s a sausage fest, and I’m the only available mustard.

  “Well, I’ll be a donkey’s ass,” the bartender says when I turn towards him. Like it was a sign, the rest of the bar starts talking again.

  “April, this is Sile. He owns the place,” Eros introduces me to the grinning man behind the bar.

  Sile doesn’t look like a business owner. He looks a bit like a drunk Santa, if Santa broke his nose a few times. Wild white hair that could use a brush, a pot belly, and a gleam in his eyes full of the type of jolliness that comes from red wine rather than candy cane’s, I can’t help but smile back at him.

  He runs a hand over his buttoned Hawaiian shirt, though I’m not sure if it’s to wipe off his hand or to try to straighten his shirt.

  “If I knew you were bringing the beauty queen in, I would have cleaned up a bit beforehand. What can I get for you sugar-britches? Wine? Meade?”

  I look at Eros.

  “I’m not sure we’re prepared for any of your concoctions today, Silenus. Just give us a bottle of something unopened and two glasses,” he answers. He must come here a lot to be able to order something like that. Eros doesn’t seem like a barfly, especially not the type who frequents a place like this.

  “You wound me, cherub. Who do you think I am, Danny-boy? I don’t serve concoctions, only the finest beverages in town.” He puffs his chest up.

  Sile actually seems almost offended, but Eros doesn’t back down.

  “You raised Dan from a baby. Everything he knows about booze-making came from you, and you know it. I meant no offense, Sile. We just got back from a crime scene and need something to take the edge off, not make us wake up in three days in New Mexico with tattoos on our asses.”

  Sile guffaws. “You’re not still sore at Danny-boy over that business, are you? I know you don’t remember much, but he swears you had a great time.”

  Eros just glares.

  Sile throws his hands up. “Okay, okay. I’ll go grab you something.” He walks away towards a back room.

  “A tattoo on your ass?” I snicker.

  “Yeah, it hurt like hell to get removed. His foster son is basically an eternal party. He’s a good guy, mostly, but sometimes takes it too far if you aren’t careful. Sile here, well he’s an old goat. It’s never a good idea to completely trust the people serving you booze.”

  Sile comes back holding a smallish bottle that has an almost iridescent liquid inside. He places it in front of us with three shot glasses. Eros eyes it.

  “Nectar? I’m not sure, Sile,” he says, then looks at me.

  “Bebe brought this by a few weeks ago. I’ve been holding onto it. Might as well break the seal, right? Plus, if you’re tangled up in any sort of mess, you could use the fortification.”

  Eros laughs. “I’m plenty fortified, old man. And it doesn’t look like you much need it, either.”

  “What about you? You look like you could use a little kick,” Sile asks me.

  “Sile—”

  “What? You said you were strong, you didn’t say anyt
hing about her. She looks like she could use the kick.”

  “She’ll be fine. You should save it for an emergency.”

  What? Eros must see the confusion on my face.

  “It’s like a very strong honey-mead, and is usually saved for very special occasions,” he explains, even though he said emergency not special occasion, when he told Sile to save it.

  “Eros, it’s not everyday someone as pretty as she is comes through that door. I’d say this is plenty special. Besides, you never know when an emergency could pop up. It’s better to be at full strength.”

  Eros looks at me.

  “Sile, I would love to try some. Thank you,” I interject before Eros says anything. All this conversation about a drink. I’m mentally filing it away for later, since it qualifies as another weird thing.

  I’ll need to break out that file of weird before soon; it’s starting to get pretty full.

  “How about it, should I fill your cup too?” Sile asks Eros after giving me a warm smile.

  “Sure, for all the good it will do,” Eros says.

  “We used to drink this because we loved it, not because we needed it.”

  “Maybe you did,” Eros mumbles, but Sile ignores the comment and opens the bottle.

  He carefully pours three shots then slides a glass to me and Eros, before grabbing his and holding it up.

  “A toast to love and beauty, the one thing to which all men pay homage,” Sile says, with a slight nod of his head when he looks at me, before bringing the glass up to his mouth for a sip.

  I notice that Eros also takes a sip instead of tipping the whole glass back. He closes his eyes after tasting it like he’s savoring it.

  I look in my tiny cup. Anything strong enough to make two grown men sip must be very strong indeed. Self consciously, because Sile and Eros are both looking at me now, I bring it up to my mouth and take a sip.

  It tastes like honey, if the bees collected the nectar from the sun. I know why Eros closed his eyes, because I do the same and just feel the warmth spread down my throat and settle into my chest. I take another sip, and another, and this time the warmth spreads further in my body. My glass is empty now and I set it down, wanting more.