by Faith Hunter
Cadence told her interviewers everything, monitored by Margot in the interrogation room and by Tandy, Rick, and Occam in the equipment room with me, watching. As part of not pursuing an investigation into Cadence Merriweather (though the bargain hadn’t been stated so bluntly) PsyLED was provided full financial records, including a list of businesses owned all or in part by the CEO husband, who was now a person of interest, if not an outright suspect, because he had stood to lose millions if his wife had divorced him for the murder victim. If he knew about Cadence’s affair or thought that she knew about his, that would give him more motives to commit crimes. FireWind was also informed that any further harassment of Goode’s client would result in legal consequences.
Rick and Tandy slipped out of the observation room during the game of 3D legal chess, the main participants claiming territory and threatening each other. I was still thinking. “Occam? Was Stella trying to put the original poly marriage back together?”
He slid his eyes to me. They looked greenish in the odd lighting. “Not just the original version. FireWind thinks she wanted a houseful of partners, some new, some old. Check this morning’s summation.”
I frowned and pulled up the summation, scanning it fast. Then I skimmed through the pics of all the injured and dead. They all fell into a similar age range and they were all attractive, single people. “Was she having an affair with Monica Belcher too? And what about Verna Upton, the housekeeper?”
Occam gave a half smile, watching the people on the other side of the window wrap up the interview. “Yes, she was, Nell, sugar. Does that creep you out?”
“Creep me—” I tapped on his shoulder.
He didn’t turn to me, but his smile did widen.
“Occam. Let me be perfectly clear. I am not offended or emotionally distressed about the lifestyle of these people. I may not like looking at photographs of a bed full of naked people, but I am not a prude.”
He laughed. “Oh, Nell, sugar.” Occam’s eyes captured mine, and he put his hands on my shoulders, massaging them with his fingers. The stiff ones felt weaker than the others, but they were warm and my tension slid away. “I don’t think you’re a prude. In fact, I know from very pleasurable personal experience that you are not a prude. But in a lot of ways you are god-awful innocent. You’re still kind and compassionate and virtuous and—” He stopped, as if trying to decide to say the next part. I scowled at him. “And a little naïve,” he finished.
I huffed at him. “I am not naïve.”
“Not about humans, no. But about sex, yes. You are. If this had been a man having sex with all the females, you’d have understood it perfectly. But it’s a woman having sex with all the men and all the women, and that fights against your upbringing.” He leaned and kissed me on the forehead, like he might a child. Without another word, Occam left me alone in the observation room. Which was probably a good thing, because I was irked. Very irked. Maybe even riled. Because I thought I had hidden it so well.
Goode and the grieving Mrs. Merriweather left HQ and I left the observation room.
Back in my cubicle I opened the files Jo had scanned and downloaded to us from the Merriweather financial records and began comparing information. And I found something that inserted a lot of questions into Cadence Merriweather’s sworn interview. But . . . did my discovery mean that Cadence had successfully lied, perhaps by omission, to Margot Racer?
I stood from my office chair and carried my tablet to the conference room, where FireWind, Rick, Margot, and JoJo were discussing the case. FireWind was standing in the doorway, a cup of coffee in his hand, his crisp shirt blinding white in the bright lights. As I walked up the hallway, he stopped in midsentence and turned to me. “Ingram. You have something?”
“Some of the companies that the Merriweathers own are listed solely in Cadence’s name,” I said.
“Of course,” FireWind said. “There can be tax benefits to putting some businesses under one name.”
I said, “Cadence Merriweather owns forty-nine percent of the silk-screen-printing business that handles Stella Mae’s promotional merchandise. Merry Promotions, and by extension, Cadence, made the T-shirts in the box at Melody Horse Farm. She said she ran into Stella Mae at an antiques store. But she’s had a business connection to her for over two years. And the person who owns fifty-one percent? Is a man named Hugo Ames.”
Rick whispered a soft curse. JoJo started pounding on her keyboards.
I said, “Hugo knows Cadence and is blackmailing her. And Hugo knew Stella Mae. But Cadence might not know Hugo was doing business with Stella.”
FireWind asked, “Why didn’t she tell us that? Did she lie by omission?”
Margot said, “No. No way. There was not one single hint of a lie in that woman.”
FireWind started to speak and Margot interrupted. “Not one hint.”
FireWind held up a hand as if to stop a possible tirade. Margot glared at him. “I am not saying you were wrong, Racer. We can’t assume that Cadence knew Merry Promotions’ connection to Stella Mae Ragel’s death, because we haven’t released that information to the press. If her husband set up the business arrangements, she might not even have known she owned the business. It happens. We need a subpoena for Merry Promotions. We need to work this by the book.”
“Or,” I said, “Hugo was blackmailing Cadence about her past life in return for money poured into the business, money Hugo took out. Like money laundering.”
“Hugo is our linchpin,” Rick said, dropping to a chair and pulling his laptop to him. “He knew everyone.”
JoJo muttered, “We told Goode there would be no interference in her client’s life. We signed papers drawn up by a very expensive, very astute, very unhappy lawyer.”
“But if Luther Merriweather had figured out that his devoted wife was in the process of a legal separation and wanted to point a finger at his bride, what better way than to use her business. I’ll contact Goode,” FireWind said, “and find out if Mrs. Merriweather knew she owned the business that provided promotional merchandise for her lover. And I’ll ask if the blackmail against her client involved money poured into the business. Jones, facilitate subpoenas into the company’s financial records and Hugo’s financial records. The rest of you, gear up. We need to raid Merry Promotions before anyone can destroy any evidence.”
* * *
* * *
As we changed clothes, and checked weapons, ammo, null pens, comms equipment, psy-meters, and vests, JoJo created a timeline on Luther Merriweather’s travel, based on his business credit card expenses. Luther was in Nashville the week the T-shirt box was delivered to the horse farm owned by Stella Mae, and Nashville was only a short drive away. But Luther was a big guy, six feet, two inches, two hundred forty pounds. We had video of the delivery and the person was shorter, stout, and the body mechanics looked female. Luther Merriweather did not deliver anything to Stella Mae’s farm.
However, Hugo Ames, the blackmailer, was smaller, knew about Cadence’s and Stella’s past lives, and he lived close enough to Stella’s to have made the delivery.
Jo also checked into Cadence’s whereabouts that week. Mrs. Merriweather was in Atlanta with two friends from her church, attending a play and a concert and shopping. She flew both ways and spent a fortune. It was possible for her to drive to Tennessee and make a delivery, but it was extremely unlikely.
T. Laine initiated a background check on witches in the Merriweather family history and, according to all publicly listed (and some private) witch bloodline sites, there was nothing. As she put it, on paper Luther was a plain old vanilla human and so was his wife, Cadence.
JoJo worked like a fiend while we geared up and found proof that Hugo had been part of the commune, though not part of the poly marriage. And Hugo’s mom was a single mother. He took her last name. The Ames family had produced a line of witch blood, until the 1850s when it died out. Had it come ba
ck in some strange manner in Hugo?
When I was as ready as I could be, I stopped by the conference room and Jo handed me a burner cell. “Turn on your church-speak, country hick chick, call Merry Promotions, and ask to speak to Hugo. See if you can find where he is today.”
I turned the small flip phone over in my hands and thought how I would handle this call. Why did it have to be in church-speak? Was church-speak becoming a crutch for me? Would Margot or Goode use a crutch when there might be another way? I had been undercover once for a few minutes. I was more than a churchwoman.
JoJo slid a scrap of paper across the conference desk to me. On it was a phone number and the words Merry Promotions.
I dialed the number. A woman answered with the words, “Merry Promotions, how can I help you?”
I remembered how the lawyer Goode had spoken and took a slow breath, lowered my voice, and said, “This is Maggie Jones, Loretta Hopkins’ business manager. Put Hugo on.”
“I’m sorry. Mr. Ames isn’t in today,” the woman on the other end said cautiously.
“What? Where’s Hugo?” I demanded. “He was supposed to meet me an hour ago. He isn’t answering his cell, texts, or e-mail. I don’t have time to keep sitting around waiting on him. Does Merry Promotions want the swag contract on Loretta’s next three tours or not?”
“Loretta Hopkins . . . Oh my God. He was supposed to meet you?”
“He was,” I said stiffly. “Where is he?”
“We don’t . . . I’m sorry. We don’t know. He left early yesterday, not feeling well. We can’t get in touch with him either.”
“Oh.” I hesitated and let my voice fall into worried tones. “Have you called the police? The local hospitals?”
“No, I—”
“Never mind.” I hung up.
“Who are you and how did you get into Nell’s head?” JoJo asked, her eyebrows trying to meet in the middle and a fist on her hip.
I grinned, my shoulders back, my head held high. “That was fun. He isn’t at the shop. Went home sick yesterday.”
Occam was standing at the door, his eyes on me, warm and full of approval. “That was amazing, Nell, sugar. Come on. We’re raiding Hugo Ames’ home and business at the same time. Rick and Margot are leading a team on Merry Promotions. We’ll be at his house with T. Laine. We need to hit the road first because we have an RVAC to launch and look over the house. FireWind will be staged at the Campbell County Sheriff’s Department, halfway between the two locations, running the show with local LEOs.”
I handed the small cell back to JoJo, picked up my gear, weapon, and the potted cabbage at my cubby. As I followed Occam down the stairs, I called Esther to let her know I’d be late. Everything I could control was in place and managed, and I could turn my attention to the coming raid, which was in Crossville, on the I-40 corridor between Knoxville and Cookeville. All the crime scenes seemed to be along the interstate, no outlying towns. That made Merry Promotions close enough to deliver, but not expensive to ship to Stella’s studio. Merry Promotions could easily have delivered a late box of tour T-shirts, though who then set up the trigger was still an unknown.
According to the sat photos and files Jo had sent to everyone’s tablets, Crossville was in Cumberland County, which meant integrating into this case even more people we hadn’t worked with before, but at least it wasn’t so far away.
Like a lot of homes in the area, Ames’ rental house was isolated, at the end of a quarter-mile-long, two-rut gravel drive. We planned to approach from the north, along the next street over, from an overgrown lot with a vacant trailer, but when we arrived, we found the front half of the lot had been cleared and planted with a garden. The lack of rain hadn’t done the garden much good, and the plants looked stressed and ragged. The trailer home looked worse as we pulled around behind it. It had to be sixty years old, the metal a faded blue, windows busted. Household furniture was in a pile out back and critters were using it as a home. When I opened my door, the air stank of garbage and dead animals, but with the cars behind the trailer, we couldn’t be seen from the road, giving us privacy to work.
A sheriff’s deputy car pulled in behind us, but the deputy didn’t get out, leaving his engine running, which contributed to the miasma of stinks, so I ignored him.
We had done this sort of prep work for a raid often and there was little need for instructions or chitchat between us. FireWind, however, was full of suggestions to both teams and was in communication with the locals too. While we worked, I turned off the main comms channel and concentrated on the para freq, the frequency used by PsyLED.
Occam got the remote-viewing aircraft checked out in record time and the deputy assigned to us finally got out of his vehicle. He joined us at the laptop to view the aerial footage. Deputy Robb was male, about my height, slender, muscular, didn’t talk much, and asked no questions about the equipment or the proceedings. I went back to the general frequency when the RVAC took off, its multiple little rotors spinning too fast to see. The laptop screen showed the trees and nearby houses as it gained altitude. Occam adjusted its direction, his hands maneuvering the small craft with multiple trackballs and levers on a handheld device. “Okay,” Occam said softly. “Let’s see what’s happening at Hugo Ames’ place.”
Less than five hundred feet away, the view of Hugo’s home wasn’t what we had been hoping for. The RVAC camera sent back a steady camera footage of dead trees, dead bushes, dead grass, and a dog lying in the backyard. Occam guided the RVAC closer to see that the dog was dead and oozing green goo. The deputy swore softly, leaning in to get a better vantage.
T. Laine said, “Increase altitude. We don’t know how high the death and decay reaches. You don’t want to damage the RVAC.”
Occam maneuvered the RVAC higher and circled the house from a good hundred feet up.
Over our earbuds, FireWind, who was viewing the video in real time too, said, “Bring the RVAC home. Move to the Ames’ house. Dress out in P3Es. Approach the house. Read it on the psy-meter 2.0. We’ll adjust our strategy after we know more. We are moving in now on Merry Promotions. Hold.” We heard a click, a silence that lasted for ten seconds or so, and another click as Occam guided the RVAC back to us. “The portable null is on the way from UTMC with two paramedics, but it is a good hour behind you if traffic is good. Turn on vest cams. Stay alert.”
We drove to Ames’ house, easing down his bumpy, potholed gravel drive until the house came into sight. I pulled in behind Occam and T. Laine, all of us parking far from the house, in an area still green and alive. When I got out, there was no noise, no birdsong, no dogs barking in the distance. Occam’s nose wrinkled at the faint stink of death hanging on the still air. The house might have been pretty once, cedar siding, painted shutters, cedar shake roof; now it was falling apart, the siding brittle gray, shakes falling off, paint curling from the trim. The trees and shrubs all around the house were dead. Three dead male cardinals lay in the front yard, their bright red plumage the only spots of color. Even without reading the property with the psy-meter, it was clear that we had found death and decay in an advanced state. The deputy’s car backed away and disappeared. I didn’t blame him.
“Levels?” FireWind asked over the para freq.
Occam read the property with the psy-meter 2.0 and said, “Off the charts. Redlined. This is a stronger death and decay or it’s been going longer than at Stella Mae’s farm.”
“Merry Promotions said Hugo was at work yesterday,” I said. “And if he killed Stella, why is his place falling apart? And . . .” I fell silent. There were too many variables and nothing made sense.
“Kent. How do you want to handle it?” FireWind asked.
“Want?” T. Laine asked, sounding bitter. “I want to sit the grand pooh-bahs of the Witch Council of the United States of America down and compel them to design and fabricate a major-class nullification working to defeat this—this stuff.” I h
ad a feeling she wanted to use stronger words but had managed not to. “A major nullification working needs to be a priority. But that isn’t gonna happen, ever, because, one, they don’t like me, and two, no witch is going to create a true antimagic working for fear it will be used against them. And three, they aren’t going to listen to anyone in law enforcement anyway, not with the antiwitch bent of most law enforcement types for, say, the last two millennia. Other than that? I want us to go in, in case there are people in there who happen to be alive.”
“Copy,” FireWind said, his tone unchanged.
We stepped forward, onto the crunchy grass, and stopped. The sound of field boots on the lawn was odd, unfamiliar. I leaned down and touched a pinkie to a single blade of grass. The cold of death and decay cut through my finger. I rose up quickly and took a step back. The grass leaf crumpled. The lawn beneath us was still green, but it was dead, as if the leaves hadn’t yet figured out they had been killed.
“Move the cars back fifty feet,” T. Laine said, her voice tight. As the unit’s witch, she had been going almost nonstop, burning her candle from both ends, and not getting anywhere. This had to feel as if she needed to cut her candle in two and burn it at four ends just to keep up with the bodies and the spread of the death and decay. As we all reentered our cars and pulled them to safety, T. Laine spoke into her mic. “FireWind. We won’t be wearing vest cams or electronics. I don’t think they’ll hold up to the energies here.”
“Copy that,” he said back. “Limited exposure. An hour in the portable null room after.”
“Copy,” T. Laine said.
T. Laine called the North Nashville coven to come deactivate the working. Knoxville was closer, but the local covens would take a lot of hand-holding to be able to shield the energies and that was if the coven leader bothered to answer when we called her. The four witches who had helped out at the coffee shop were disinclined to work on death and decay again.
