Spooky Business

by S. E. Harmon

  I felt a presence beside me as I waited for them to open the second barrel and knew it was Danny without looking. It was more than just smelling his soap—his nearness settled me. Out of my peripheral, I saw a pack of Tums with the wrapper rolled down.

  It should be a crime how well he knew me. I plucked two tabs off the roll with a murmur of thanks and popped them in my mouth. My half smile of gratitude quickly became a grimace. I’d love to meet the fool who decided the taste of chalk could only be enhanced by cherry flavoring. Even after I swallowed, I could still feel the grit from the tabs in the recesses of my mouth.

  “You all right?” Danny asked quietly as he pocketed the roll.

  “I need to call her brother,” I said. “He’s had a headstone on an empty grave for long enough.”

  “Not until we get an official ID.” His tone was gentle. “They’re going straight to Saunders. I’ll have Tate pull some strings to get a rush on them.”

  I nodded. “And then?”

  He squeezed my shoulder. “And then you can make the call.”

  I stared at Lana’s hairpin, which had tiny smears of something dark on one of the wings. It took me a moment to realize the marks were probably speckles of dried blood. Combined with the cheery yellow and black colors of the pin, it looked like a dead bee.

  Apis.

  I frowned, staring down at the pin some more as something tried to gel. The girls were all given a fake contract from someone at Apis Modeling. My rudimentary grasp of Latin kicked in. “Oh, wow,” I said softly.

  I pulled out my phone and did a quick check on Google, just to be sure. I nodded as the search results popped up immediately. “Just as I thought.”

  Danny looked askance at me. “Are you all right?”

  “Apis in Latin. It means honeybee.” I barely resisted smacking my forehead. “The honey Valerie gave me had a label with Apis on it, too.”

  After a few seconds, comprehension dawned in his eyes. “Now that’s the kind of proof I can sink my teeth into.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “Like I said, proof is my middle name.”

  Chapter 18

  An hour later, I knocked on Valerie’s front door, a warrant clenched in my other hand. She opened the door and peered out, not all that surprised to see the entire PTU crammed on her porch. Without a word, she stepped back to let us in.

  Tabitha, Nick, and Danny headed in, human bloodhounds with tails and noses pointed, ready for the hunt. I didn’t even have to tell Valerie to wait outside. She sat in one of the two comfortable looking rocking chairs on the porch. After a moment of indecision, I took the other.

  “I just pulled a loaf of banana bread out of the oven,” she ventured. “I’d love to send you home with some. And maybe a jar of my honey?”

  All right, fuck this I’m just an old lady just peddling my fresh honey shit. I decided to cut straight to the heart of the matter. “When did you decide to take Delilah’s baby?” I asked bluntly.

  “I didn’t take her baby,” she said, her expression a little wounded. “Most of what I told you before is the truth. She called me up one day, out of the blue, asking me for help leaving her husband. I hadn’t heard from her in years, but how could I say no? I didn’t know she was pregnant until she got here.”

  “How far along was she?”

  “About four months. She had the baby right in the guest room, with the help of my mother and sister.” Walter ambled over and laid at her feet. She looked down at him with a little smile and eased off her sandal. She rubbed him lightly with her foot, still rocking gently. “I was thrilled to have a baby in the house. I may not have been able to have my own, but it was the next best thing. We could raise him together.”

  “So what happened to that plan?”

  “Kane happened. He came sniffing around one day, just like I told you. She hid in the closet with Joey until he left. She was so scared because she knew he’d be back. That’s when she started talking about leaving.”

  I nodded. “So you decided to kill her.”

  “No, I convinced her to leave Joey with me. I told her that living a life on the run was no place for a baby. And that she’d moved heaven and earth to give him a better life, so give him a better life. She eventually agreed.” She rubbed Walter some more, and he sighed in his sleep. “She came back to visit him sometimes. For a while, everything was perfect.”

  “So what changed?”

  “She realized Kane could no longer control her every move. It made her bold. She got a job and rented an apartment. She started dating some guy.” She bit her lip. “One day, she came for a visit, and things were just… different. I knew it was coming. I just knew.”

  “She wanted to take Joey back with her.”

  She nodded, her eyes a little teary. “She sat me down and held my hands tight. She told me she loved me for everything I’d done, but it was time Joey came home with his mother. His mother.” A tear slipped down her cheek. “No matter what I did for him, she was his real mother.”

  “And she never let you forget it,” I guessed.

  She nodded. “She wanted to take away my most precious thing. I couldn’t let that happen.”

  “How did you kill her?”

  “I might’ve laced her honey with poison. Honey on hot biscuits was one of her favorite things.”

  “Arsenic?”

  “Cyanide.” Her voice was subdued. “She was dead almost instantly.”

  “What did you do with the body?”

  “I did what I had to do to make sure she was never discovered.” Her mouth tightened. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

  That was fine. We had a hell of a lot more to talk about. “What about the three copycat murders? Were you responsible for their deaths as well?” She didn’t answer, but I wasn’t giving up. “You created Apis Modeling to lure them in, correct?”

  “I’d already created the modeling company for my honey products,” she said reluctantly. “I expanded into lotions and lip balm, and I needed some natural, pretty faces for my ads.”

  I had to admit, she had me on the edge of my seat. The transition from skincare to murder was a bit of a nail biter. “Why did you kill the three girls?”

  “It’s not like I had much of a choice,” she burst out. “Thomas Kane found out what happened to Delilah. She’d started writing to him without telling me. I should’ve known she couldn’t keep away from that man.”

  “What did she tell him about you?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Probably that she was going to my house to get Joey. When she never contacted him again, he figured out what happened fairly quickly.”

  “And began blackmailing you,” I guessed.

  “Yes. He wouldn’t stop writing me. Taunting me.” Her voice was whisper quiet. “Telling me that he knew what I’d done.”

  “Was he upset about Delilah’s death?”

  “No, he made sure to tell me he didn’t care about that ‘disloyal bitch.’ He’d convinced her to finish the installations in his Rose garden, but I’d taken that away. So now it was up to me. He didn’t care how I got it done, just that I buried them in his stupid garden.”

  “So you did what you had to do.”

  She glared at me. “I know you’re judging me, so stop pretending to be on my side. If I didn’t do what Kane wanted, he’d go to the authorities. Who would have taken care of Joey then?”

  The front door swung open and Nick came out onto the porch, raking dust from his spiky hair. Tabitha followed close behind, her color high from her exertions. “Danny is checking the garage, but the place looks clean,” she said. “CSU is on its way to do a more thorough sweep.”

  No one was all that surprised. She’d had more than enough time to get rid of any evidence. Valerie didn’t seem relieved. She couldn’t stop wringing her small, wrinkled hands. I let the silence between us extend, hoping she’d finally come out with whatever was making her look like she was about to keel over.

  “What about Joey?” I asked quietly.
“When did you decide to kill him?”

  For the first time since we’d arrived, she showed another emotion other than weary resignation. Her cheeks colored with anger. “I would never harm my son. I told you that from the very beginning.”

  Nick snorted. “You’ll have to forgive me if I find that hard to believe.”

  She bristled. “I don’t care what you believe. It’s the truth.”

  “Valerie,” Tabitha said softly, “this is your chance to clear the record. I think it’s important to you that the world knows you didn’t kill your baby boy.”

  Valerie’s shoulders sagged as the anger drained from her body. “I didn’t kill him and that’s the truth. I gave up everything to make sure he had a good life. A normal life.”

  As normal as life can be when your parents are serial killers.

  “You’re going to have to answer for what you’ve done,” I said gently.

  She nodded jerkily, even as tears spilled over her cheeks.

  Danny suddenly appeared from around the house. I opened my mouth to tell him what we’d found out, but one look at his ashen face brought me to my feet. “What is it?”

  “We’ve got a problem,” he said grimly.

  “What kind of problem?”

  “A body in the deep freezer kind of problem.”

  I’d like to say I took his announcement in stride, but my mouth fell open without my permission. When I glanced at Nick and Tabitha, I found them in pretty much the same state. Mutually gobsmacked, we all turned in almost perfect unison to stare at Valerie. She ignored us, rocking in her chair quietly.

  Danny pulled a pair of cuffs out of his back pocket. “Can you stand up for me and turn around?”

  Her back stiffened, but she nodded. At the last moment, Danny decided to cuff her in the front, so she wouldn’t be miserable. Her only request was that we take Walter to the neighbor’s house, which Tabitha immediately did. Walter plodded along after her, glancing back every so often as if he knew something was terribly wrong.

  Guess Walter had good instincts after all.

  She kept a stiff upper lip through the reading of her Miranda rights, and we secured her in the back of the car without incident. Danny shut the back door of the Charger. He looked as calm and unflappable as usual, but I could tell he was a little frazzled because he started rubbing the back of his neck. If we weren’t at work, I would’ve replaced his punishing hand with a more therapeutic touch.

  As it was, I bumped his shoulder with mine. “If you’re trying to strangle yourself, a belt works better.”

  He snorted. “This is definitely the kind of case that would make me consider it. We have the murdered son of a serial killer, who is obsessed with you because you sort of resemble his ex-boyfriend.”

  I shrugged. “The Alex resemblance thing is uncanny. Kind of handy if you want to know what I’ll look like in fifteen years or so.”

  “I’d like to be surprised, thanks,” he said dryly. “We also have a serial killer, a manipulative bastard, who kept critical information from you during the investigation.”

  “That’s Kane in a nutshell.”

  “The missing Delilah Rose, stuffed in a deep freezer right on top of some damned pizza rolls.”

  “Remind me to get some of those—”

  “An elderly woman who killed three women to complete the lifelong dream of a serial killer, so he wouldn’t turn her in to the police for killing someone else.”

  I squinted as I reviewed his bullet points. Yep, I think he got it all. “That sounds about right. And now we get to fill out a shit ton of paperwork to cap off our adventure.”

  He gave his neck one last squeeze. “When I get home, my first order of business will be to put something alcoholic in a tall glass,” he promised as he went around to the driver’s side of the car. “That’s about the only thing that can save this day.”

  I figured it wasn’t the right time to tell him we were out of booze.

  *

  It had been a long day and the next promised to be even longer.

  I got out of the shower to my phone vibrating with a text. I only took a few seconds to wrap a towel around my waist before I grabbed it off the vanity. Still dripping water on the bathroom mat, I read the text from Graycie, which was short and to the point. Kane is ready.

  Fuck. I sighed as I padded into the bedroom. I knew better than to hope Kane had something to say that I wanted to hear. It would be yet another exhausting day of verbal parrying and thrusting with a man who had nothing to lose or gain.

  I dallied only long enough to do a half-assed job of drying off. Then, I pulled on a pair of sleep pants and climbed into bed. Danny came through the door only a few minutes later, flicking off the light as he went. I still had on my nightstand lamp, which cast the room in a soft glow.

  He climbed into bed, rustling the covers for a few minutes as he got comfortable. “It’s been a long damn day.”

  “You plucked that thought right out of my head.” Yawning, I rolled toward him. His arm locked around me, and I buried my face against his neck. He felt good against me, all warm skin and solid muscle. He smelled even better. “You certainly know how to show a guy a good time.”

  “You don’t find unearthing bodies from freezers enjoyable?” I could hear the smile in his voice. “That probably means you’re not coming with me to the ME’s office tomorrow for Saunders’s preliminary report.”

  I chuckled. “Even if I didn’t have to go down to BCI again, the answer would be no. If I can get out of seeing a body defrosted like chicken breast, I will. Every time.”

  His next words wiped that smile right off my face. “My mother wants to have dinner with us on Friday. Here.”

  “What? Why?” It took me a moment to bring my voice down from an only dogs can hear me level. “Is it the roof thing? Because I’ll pay to have it fixed.”

  “Uncle Charlie and I already fixed it. She wants to show you that she approves of us as a couple.”

  “Has she ever heard of Edible Arrangements? Nothing says I love you, my gay son like those sunflower pineapple things.”

  “It’s happening,” he said definitively. “So get on board.”

  I’d get on board, but I wouldn’t go gracefully; he was going to have to drag me on this particular train by my ankles. “What time?” I asked with a sigh. “And do you have to pick her up? Or do we just draw a pentagram on the floor and chant I summon thee three times?”

  He chuckled. “She’s trying, Rain. Trust me.”

  Trying? I harrumphed. That was all well and dandy, but in the words of the country great Shania Twain, that don’t impress me much.

  “Believe it or not, it’s not easy for her to share me when she’s had me to herself for so long. Especially with you.”

  I scowled. “Why ‘especially with me’?”

  “Because she knows you’re the real thing.”

  For that, I could forgive him just about anything. I was glad the room was dim, so he couldn’t see the small smile on my face. I knew it was probably disgustingly sappy. One day, these sappy goddamn smiles he kept putting on my face were going to stick. That would probably make interrogating people kind of awkward.

  I kissed him in the crook of his neck, where his scent was strongest. “You really do smell good,” I said, sniffing him and inhaling. “That’s not your usual soap.”

  “It’s your mom’s newest creation,” he said, trying to pretend he wasn’t ticklish and failing when I kissed him there again. “I don’t know what it’s called, but she asked me to try it. It’s in the yellow container in the shower if you want to smell like a citrus salad all day, too.”

  “Hard pass.” I paused. “Did you try those bath bombs she put in the bag?”

  “We don’t have a tub,” he murmured sleepily.

  “I told her that, but she’d didn’t seem all that concerned.” I was curious enough to give them a go. They sounded fun. Manly. “You think they explode when you put them in water?”

 
When Danny didn’t respond, I glanced over only to see his chest rising and falling with his rhythmic breathing. I reached over to quietly turn off the bedside lamp and settled down beside him, propped up on my elbow. The moon was fat and full tonight, so I could still see his profile just fine.

  I enjoyed staring at him while he slept.

  Admittedly, it was my creepiest behavior by far—and that was saying quite a bit—but I had my reasons. Simply put, he viewed the world through cautious lenses and whether that was from his years of police work, or foster care, or maybe a combination of both, I didn’t know. But, understandably, he was a wary sonofabitch. When he was sleeping, his face was so open and honest, his features relaxed… I might even use the word sweet.

  I knew it would be a while before I joined him in dreamland. Adrenaline still rushed through my veins from finally finding the Roses and being able to give them back to their families. It wasn’t nearly enough, but that was a limitation of our department. Most cold case files, whether the victims were classified as “missing” or not, were homicides. We just didn’t know it yet. It was rarely an option to find our victims alive.

  I had to settle for bringing them home.

  A slight crinkle appeared between Danny’s brows, as if he could sense a disturbance in the atmosphere. There was movement behind his lids for a few seconds before they fluttered a bit and finally lifted. He blinked at me for a moment, clearly a little flummoxed to find us nose to nose. “Rain?”

  “Yep.”

  “Is there a reason you’re staring at me like that? Or did I wake up just in time to catch you smothering me with a pillow?”

  “And if I said it was the latter?”

  “Then make it quick.” He yawned. “I have a meeting with Tate tomorrow that I’d like to skip out on.”