Because they were already staring, I decided to join the club. “It looks like a snake with a line through it.” Something niggled the back of my brain. “It reminds me of something I saw on Jed Burnham’s neck when he was on the ground.”
“Jed Burnham is the man who made funny chomping noises after dying a month before tackling you?” Dad asked.
“Yes. And they weren’t chomping noises. It was more like he was smacking his lips because he wanted a tasty snack.”
“Then why did he go after you?” Braden asked.
“Hey, not that I want to be eaten, but I bet I’m delicious.” I realized what I said when it was too late to yank it back into my mouth. Whoops. “That came out wrong.”
“I’m pretending I didn’t hear it,” Dad said. “What do you think the symbol means, Cillian?”
“I don’t know.” Cillian waved us back so he could take a photograph. “I’ll look it up when we get back home.”
“What else should we look for?” Braden asked, glancing around. “We didn’t just come here for a symbol, did we?”
“No,” Cillian replied. “I was hoping someone would be hanging around. The last time I was here it was crawling with people. I thought we might be able to talk to someone who has actual knowledge of voodoo instead of winging things for a change.”
As if on cue, a young girl – she looked to be about fifteen – poked her head out from behind the mausoleum. She had long dark hair, wide brown eyes, and a live chicken clutched to her chest.
“Who are you looking for?” she asked.
I forced a smile for her benefit and took a step forward. I figured it was better to present a friendly front rather than letting my brothers run roughshod over her. “Do you live around here?” I asked.
She nodded. “Across that way.” She kept hold of the chicken with one hand as she pointed with the other. “My gran is buried here. I visit sometimes.”
“Oh, really?” That was good news. That meant she was probably familiar with the voodoo culture. “Are you here to sacrifice that chicken to her?”
“Aisling!” Dad’s voice was low and full of warning.
“What?” I risked a glance at Cillian and found him shaking his head. “What did I say?”
“This is Sassy,” the girl said. “She’s a pet. She escaped from her coop and I chased her over here.”
“Oh. So … you’re not going to sacrifice it? That’s good. That would’ve made me sad.”
Instead of being offended, the girl giggled. “You’re funny.”
“You should tell these guys that. They don’t think I’m funny at all.”
“That’s because we’ve spent more than three minutes with you,” Dad said. “What is your name, young lady?”
“Astryd.”
“That’s a pretty name.” Dad pasted a smile on his face that would’ve made pedophiles everywhere say “too much.”
“You’re going to creep her out.” I edged him away with my hip. “Are you familiar with the symbols and stuff around here?”
Astryd nodded. “Why?”
“Do you know what this one means?” I pointed at the symbol on the mausoleum.
Astryd gave my father a wide berth as she circled to look. She nodded immediately when she saw what I pointed to. “It’s the Damballah-Wedo.”
“And what is that?”
“He’s associated with life and creation … of birth.”
Hmm. That was interesting. “Why is he shaped like a snake?”
“Because when he possesses people he hisses rather than speaks,” Astryd replied. “Why are you interested in that symbol?”
“Because I saw it on a person the other day.”
“Was the person dead?”
“How did you know that?”
Astryd shrugged. “Just a guess. He didn’t … bite you … did he?”
“No. Why would you ask that?”
“Just something I heard when I was little,” Astryd replied. “We don’t embrace the old ways all that much. We’re more … mainstreamed. That’s what my mother calls it anyway.”
“Have you ever seen anyone possessed with this mark walking around after death?” I asked, going for broke.
“Aisling!” Dad was clearly near the end of his patience rope.
“That’s a myth,” Astryd said. “My gran said that it happened when she was a child, but I’ve never seen it.”
“Do you believe it can happen?”
“I … .” Astryd chewed her bottom lip before shrugging. “I guess anything is possible. I’m not sure what I believe.”
“Okay, well, thanks for the information.” I tilted my head to the side when I heard a voice calling Astryd’s name. It sounded like a woman, and she was a fair distance from us. “I think someone is looking for you.”
“It’s my mother. She’s looking for her.” Astryd tightened her grip on the chicken. “She needs something for tonight’s sacrifice.”
“Really? You just said that was a pet.”
“Yes, but I wanted to see what you would say.” Astryd’s eyes lit with mirth as she bolted in the direction of her home, giggling maniacally as she did.
“She’s not really going to sacrifice that chicken, is she?”
“I’m pretty sure she was teasing you,” Dad said. “Come on. Let’s look around and then get out of here. We need to get Aisling back home before Griffin gets off shift if she doesn’t want him to take five layers of skin off her hide.”
“Ha, ha.” I knew he was joking, but it hit a little too close to home.
We spent twenty minutes looking around, Cillian snapping myriad photos, and then we trudged back to the parking lot. I pulled up short as we approached, my stomach doing a bit of a somersault when I found Detective Mark Green reclining against Redmond’s Expedition.
“Uh-oh.”
Dad followed my gaze. “Is that the detective who questioned you this morning?”
I nodded. “He doesn’t look happy, does he?”
“Not in the least.” Dad puffed out his chest and stepped in front of me. “Can I help you?”
“You can,” Green said, as he held up a sheet of paper. “I have a warrant to take your daughter in for formal questioning. In fact, since you’re all here, maybe you want to come along for the ride. How does that sound?”
“As if I should place a call to my attorney,” Dad replied automatically. “Does that warrant cover all of us or only Aisling?”
“Just Aisling, but I can get one for you, too, if it’s necessary.” Green’s teeth gleamed as he practically dared Dad to give him guff.
Dad wasn’t about to be bullied. “All right. Secure your warrants. I’ll call our whole legal team.”
Green’s smile slipped. “Team?”
“Yes.” Now it was Dad’s turn to smile. “I think they’ll love dealing with you. They haven’t had an easy time of it in years. It’s like playing a children’s video game as an adult. It’s … stimulating.”
16
SIXTEEN
Dad wasn’t keen on it, but he relented and allowed Green to transport me to the Royal Oak Police Department for questioning. He promised Neil would be there when I arrived, but I understood (better than even Dad probably) how things would go and wasn’t worried about flubbing the interrogation. I was worried about Griffin.
As if reading my mind, Dad patted my shoulder before I slid into the back seat of Green’s car. “I’ll call him.”
“He won’t be happy.”
“That’s not your fault.” Dad gave Green a steely-eyed glare. “I’ll be right behind her.”
“With your legal team, no doubt.” Green’s expression said he didn’t believe Dad would unleash a load of lawyerly fury on him. He was in for a rude awakening.
“I’ll see you in twenty minutes, Aisling,” Dad said, his eyes never leaving Green’s face. “Don’t worry about anything.”
Green waited until he was in the driver’s seat, his door closed, before speaking. “You should worry
. We have some tough questions for you.”
“Bring it on.”
At the police station, Green ushered me to the same interrogation room I’d occupied this morning. He made a big deal of showing me in and telling me to get comfortable before leaving me to sit in the sterile room for what felt like forever. I knew exactly what he was doing. He was trying to frazzle my nerves, cause me to be anxious and then hopefully make a mistake under questioning. As Cormack Grimlock’s daughter, I knew how that worked. I stole my father’s vehicles multiple times as a teenager, even going to so far as to accidentally dump one in the Detroit River during a pursuit one night. Trust me. Dad was much more terrifying than Green.
Neil showed up ten minutes after I was seated, and took the open chair next to me. He didn’t spare a glance for the two-way mirror on the wall, instead offering up a relaxed smile as he focused on me. “They didn’t mistreat you, did they? I will be filing several nuisance complaints before leaving today. I want to make sure I have all of them lined up.”
“They kept their rubber hoses to themselves.”
Neil snorted. “I forgot about your mouth. I believe the only time I’ve ever been speechless was when you told that officer in Detroit that you were sleepwalking when you took your father’s car from the garage and you had no recollection of how you got behind the wheel in your Hello Kitty sleep pants.”
“I still maintain that’s what happened.”
“You’re good under pressure,” Neil noted. “Don’t lose that trait. Let me do the talking. If he asks a question I believe you should answer, I will let you know.”
I nodded. “Did the rest of the legal team show up for Dad?”
Neil smiled. “I believe they’re in the lobby right now.”
“Is it an army?”
“Oh, honey, it’s a platoon.”
Neil rested his palms flat on the table and stared at the door until Green made his way in. Green was cocky, an added swagger to his step, but my ability to read people pegged it as posturing rather than legitimate bravado.
“Well, Ms. Grimlock, you seem to have had a busy day.”
“I have,” I agreed, answering before Neil gave me the go-ahead.
“Do you want to share what you’ve been doing?”
“Sure.”
Neil arched a confrontational eyebrow but didn’t stop me from barreling forward. He knew me well enough to know I wouldn’t volunteer pertinent information as much as I was going to work overtime to annoy Green until he wanted to bury his head in a pile of quicksand and cry.
“For starters, I found out my brother Redmond has performance issues,” I supplied. “Apparently it’s hard for men to … um … rise to the occasion when it’s cold out, and something happened this past weekend at a bar. But he refuses to tell me what he had planned for the woman he met on the terrace, so my mind is racing with possibilities.”
The second he realized what I was doing, Neil leaned back in his chair and relaxed. He was primed to enjoy the show. Green, on the other hand, didn’t bother to hide his irritation.
“That’s not what I was talking about.”
“I’m not done,” I chided. “Don’t be rude.”
“Far be it from me to be rude,” Green muttered.
“Great.” I plowed forward with enthusiasm, and very little of it was fake. “Then I found out that my father had a different set of rules for my brothers and me while we were growing up. Can you believe that? Apparently I was spoiled more than they were when it comes to money and goods, but they got easier rules.
“For example, there was a ‘no dropping your pants in public’ rule that I had to follow, but the boys were exempt,” I continued, enjoying the way Green’s eyes glazed over. “It’s not even that I would want to drop my pants in public. I did that a few times in high school and it really wasn’t the thrill that everyone made it out to be. It’s the simple fact that my brothers didn’t have this rule and were allowed to drop their pants willy-nilly.”
Green stared at me for a long time. “You seem to be bothered a great deal by this turn of events.”
“It threw off my entire day.”
“A day we were under the impression you were to spend in your home,” Green noted. Instead, you sneaked out and somehow ended up at Eternal Sunshine Cemetery in Detroit. Do you want to explain how that happened?”
“Don’t answer that,” Neil interjected, shaking his head. “I’ve got this one. Detective Green, was my client under arrest this afternoon?”
“No.”
“Was she breaking any laws by leaving her house in the middle of the day?”
“No.”
“Was she breaking any laws by visiting the cemetery?”
“No, but it seems an odd place for an afternoon excursion,” Green pointed out.
“The Grimlock family mausoleum is there.”
“And they visit in February?” Green didn’t look convinced. “That doesn’t seem likely.”
“There’s very little snow on the ground,” Neil pointed out. “What we do get falls for a few hours and then melts a few days later. We haven’t had snow on the ground for most of this winter. It’s been an odd weather pattern, certainly, but the Grimlocks hardly control the weather.”
“And that explains your client’s odd behavior?”
“I’m not a judge of behavior,” Neil replied. “I’m a facts person, and the fact is my client wasn’t under arrest. She was apparently under surveillance – which will be challenged in circuit court this afternoon, by the way – but she wasn’t under arrest.”
Green leaned back in his chair. “You’re going to challenge my ability to watch Ms. Grimlock?”
“I am.”
“How do you think that’s going to go for you?” Green was back to cocky.
“Much better than it will for you,” Neil replied. “The simple fact of the matter is that you’re harassing my client.”
“She’s a suspect in two different murders,” Green snapped. “She’s been in close proximity to two bodies in two days. Don’t you think that’s a bit odd?”
“I think that investigating bodies is your business,” Neil replied. “I think that stopping you from harassing my client is mine.”
“Surveillance of a murder suspect is not harassment.”
“I think we’ll let a judge decide that.” Neil patted my hand reassuringly. I honestly loved watching him work. He could get under people’s skin even faster than I could. It was a gift I wanted to emulate. “So … is that all? Can we get out of here?”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Green spat. “I haven’t even started asking questions yet.”
“Fine, but you should be aware that Ms. Grimlock is under no obligation to answer your questions. Each and every assertion you’ve lobbed at her can easily be explained away. I will bring up exactly that fact when I argue in front of the judge this afternoon.”
“She’s a murder suspect.”
“Only because you refuse to do your job and find out what really happened,” Neil said. “If I were you, I’d be much more interested in the person who called in the anonymous tip about the body in the backyard than Ms. Grimlock, who had no idea there was a body in her backyard. That’s neither here nor there, though. You have no power to hold my client. If you try, I will have you in front of a judge for an emergency hearing before the day is out.”
“It’s almost five,” Green sneered. “What judge do you think is going to grant you an emergency hearing?”
“That’s for me to know and you to risk finding out,” Neil replied, not missing a beat. He was getting into his stride. “My client doesn’t have to answer your questions. Quite frankly, you overstepped your boundaries when you collected her at a cemetery that isn’t in your jurisdiction. Because she wasn’t under arrest, you had no right to force transportation in your vehicle. That will also be addressed in filings this evening.”
For the first time Green seemed to realize what he was up against. He was in over his head,
a guppy swimming with the sharks. I almost felt sorry for him when understanding washed over his features.
Green’s eyes were cold when they locked with mine. “Is this how it’s going to be? You’re going to hide behind your fancy lawyer.”
“I haven’t done anything to require hiding,” I said. “I was walking down the street with my boyfriend, enjoying the snow. Okay, I wasn’t enjoying the snow. He loves the snow. I was merely humoring him because the key to any good relationship is compromise.
“We were minding our own business, talking about wedding plans, when some guy barreled into me and uprooted our lives,” I continued. “I didn’t seek him out. I didn’t kill him. I don’t know what happened, and I certainly don’t understand why you seem fixated on me.”
“Jed Burnham died a month ago,” Green said. “He didn’t die on that sidewalk.”
“I believe you have video footage to the contrary,” Neil said.
“The footage could’ve been doctored.”
“Oh, really?” I tugged on my limited patience because I knew a meltdown would only hurt my standing. “You’re suggesting I killed a man I’ve never met, hid his body for a month, somehow transported it to downtown Royal Oak and then doctored the surveillance video within moments of the event happening? How do I manage to make it through the day with the weight of this super villain cape pulling at my neck?”
Neil smirked as Green scowled. “She has a point. Your medical examiner says Jed Burnham died a month ago. He’s still running tests, but he doesn’t have a specific date of death.”
“He’ll get one,” Green said.
“Perhaps, but Ms. Grimlock didn’t kill him, so you’re wasting valuable time,” Neil said. “Besides that, I’ve seen the preliminary reports. Mr. Burnham appears to have died of a heart attack. Last time I checked, that’s not murder.”
“Except Ms. Grimlock had another body in her yard this morning,” Green noted. “We don’t have a cause of death on him.”
“No, you don’t,” Neil agreed. “I’ve seen that autopsy report, too. He had no visible wounds or head injury. He also appears to have been dead for six weeks, even longer than Mr. Burnham.”
Grim Rising (Aisling Grimlock Book 7) Page 16
