Volatile Bonds

by Jaye Wells

  Gardner turned toward Shadi to ask something, but a loud slam sounded from the door downstairs. It was quickly followed by sound of feet stomping up the risers. We all turned to see the new arrival. A few moments later, a pile of blond hair emerged over the top step followed by about two hundred and fifty pounds of curves encased in spandex and patent leather. She didn’t walk so much as undulate, like she was screwing the air.

  “Hey, y’all,” she called as she stopped and stared at us expectantly, “is this the MEA office?” Sweet tea dripped from her words.

  “Who’s asking?” Gardner said.

  The woman placed her hot-pink manicure against her bosom. “I’m Fontina Douglas, darlin’—who the hell are you?”

  Morales and I exchanged a look as we both realized she was Aphrodite’s cousin from Atlanta. The Hierophant had obviously been telling the truth about her cousin taking over the coven. The question was what was she doing at our office?

  “I’m looking for Morales and Prospero,” she said when no one answered her initial question.

  “That’s us,” Morales said with about as much enthusiasm as a man facing an executioner.

  “Lawd,” she exclaimed, “my cousin didn’t tell me what a tall drink of water you are, Mr. Morales.” She batted her eyes at him. She clearly used one of those new potions that made a woman’s lashes resemble tarantula legs.

  “Special Agent,” he corrected.

  “Whatever you say, doll,” she said. “I’m here to make a delivery.”

  “This should be good,” Gardner said under her breath.

  We climbed out of the ring to approach Fontina. She waved an envelope in the air. The heavy cardstock had a pearlescent finish, and spring-green ribbons trailed from the edge.

  “It’s an invite to Aphrodite’s wedding,” Fontina said. “I have one for every member of the team, but Aphrodite said I should personally hand this one to both of you. They also told me to say that they would take it as a personal insult if you decline.”

  Considering that the last time we’d seen Aphrodite, they’d kicked us out of their temple, this was quite a surprise. However, any reaction on our part would be reported right back to the Hierophant, so I downplayed my shock. “Thanks,” I said. “It’s an honor to have them hand-delivered by a Hierophant of the Atlanta O coven.”

  “Well, I’ll be the Hierophant of the Babylon O's soon enough.”

  “Oh?” Morales said. “Aphrodite made it sound like they would still be active in the running of the coven once the wedding was done.”

  “Sure, that’s what I mean.” She smiled big, showing lots of pearly whites. “Anyway, I don’t want to interrupt your important work.” She glanced toward the boxing ring and the board we had on display. Gardner deliberately turned the panel so the case information was facing the other direction.

  Fontina tittered. “Y’all have a nice day, now, y’hear?”

  With that, she turned on her skyscraper heels and sashayed to the stairs. We all listened as she clip-clopped her way down the steps. Once the door downstairs opened and closed, I let out an audible breath.

  “She’s a peach,” I said.

  “I almost wish Aphrodite was staying in charge,” Morales said.

  “You two want to fill us in on who the hell that was?” Gardner demanded.

  “Her name’s Fontina Douglas. Up until recently, she ran a sex magic temple in Atlanta. She’s Aphrodite’s cousin and I guess she’s taking over the day-to-day operation of the Temple of Cosmic Love once Aphrodite marries themself.”

  “Hold up—who’s marrying who, now?” McGinty said.

  We quickly gave the rundown. When we were done, Mez chimed in. “Ooh, that’s going to be interesting. Any of you been to an alchemical wedding before?”

  “Can’t say I’ve had the pleasure,” Morales said.

  I shook my head. Shadi and the others didn’t bother responding, since they didn’t move much in magical circles.

  “They’re pretty rare,” he said. “On account of you have to have a sacred hermaphrodite to pull one off.”

  “Wait,” Morales said, “I thought this would be like a typical wedding with Aphrodite wearing half a tux and half a dress like Victor Victoria.”

  Mez shook his head, warming up to having the crowd’s attention. “It’s an alchemical wedding, not a Christian one. There’s a period of ritualistic preparation to achieve spiritual mastery.”

  I nodded. “When we saw Aphrodite last, they were meditating and spouting a bunch of stuff about cleansing their karma and shit.”

  “Right,” he said. “The wedding itself usually happens during a total solar eclipse.” He took my invitation and looked at the date. “Which there happens to be on the date of Aphrodite’s shindig. The ceremony itself will involve a lot of alchemical imagery and some ingesting of potions and stuff. Some people believe the hermaphrodite becomes immortal during the ceremony, but I think that’s mainly symbolic. More likely they just attain some new level of enlightenment. Anyway, it’ll be a gas.”

  “And knowing Aphrodite, there will be a lot of dramatic flair to boot,” I added.

  “Well, I don’t know about you guys,” Mez said, “but I’m totally going.”

  I exchanged a look with Morales. “I guess it’s safe to say we’ll be there too, considering Aphrodite basically had Fontina threaten us.”

  Gardner cleared her throat and shot a pointed look at her watch. “If you’re all done with your wedding plans, we have a murder to solve and possibly two covens to take down for it.”

  Mez ducked his head. “Sorry, sir.”

  “Prospero, Morales. Head over and see if you can get a bead on Krystal. I want her in custody by end of the day.”

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Morales’s jaw clench, but I put on a smile. “Yes, sir.” To Shadi, I said, “Let us know if you find anything on Hung.”

  “10-4,” she said.

  “All right, team,” Gardner said. “Let’s roll. I want potions and money on the table and bad guys and gals behind bars ASA-fucking-P.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  The ride to the massage parlor was tense, to say the least. It took a good six blocks before Morales even acknowledged me.

  “‘We’re on it, sir,’” he said in a mocking tone. Clearly, he was still hot under the collar over me talking over him when he was about to ask Gardner if we could have Hung duty instead of Shadi.

  I pursed my lips and turned my best Prospero glare on him. “Don’t give me that shit. If it were up to you, we’d be on our way to antagonizing a man who has the power to destroy your career. At least this way, we’re able to keep an eye on his movements without him knowing.”

  His jaw tightened dangerously—the way it always did when I was right and he didn’t want to admit it. “It wasn’t your call.”

  I laughed out loud at his offended tone. “You don’t get to pull rank when it suits you, Macho. Unless you’re willing to come clean with Gardner, then this has the potential of blowing back on both of us—that means I get a say in how this plays out.”

  He blew out a breath. “For the record, I really hate this case.”

  “I hate to be the one to say this, but”—I reached out and patted his arm—“I told you so.”

  He laughed out loud and shook his head at me. Once that subsided, he shot me an apologetic look. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t sweat it,” I said. “Lord knows we’ve had cases that haven’t brought out my best, either.”

  He snorted. “No shit.”

  By that time, we’d turned onto the street near Krystal’s place. We parked down the street and walked toward the entrance.

  “Is it just me,” Morales said, “or does business seem unusually slow for this time of day?”

  The massage parlor’s neon sign winked suggestively from the front window. But when I tried to open the door, it was locked tight. I knocked on the glass and put my cupped palms to the pane to look inside.

  “Don’t see any lights
on,” I said.

  Morales rapped on the pane to see if he could summon someone from the back. We waited a few moments, but no one ducked out from the back hall.

  I checked my watch. It wasn’t even noon yet. “They should be open.”

  Morales pulled his cell phone out and dialed the parlor’s phone number after reading it off the sign. After a few moments, he sighed and ended the call. “Voicemail. Let’s go around back.”

  An alley behind the building gave us access to a gray metal door with the massage parlor’s name painted across it.

  “Should I knock?” I asked.

  He shook his head and reached around me. A quick tug and the door was open.

  I frowned up at him. “That’s odd.”

  “Look alive.” His expression took on deadly focus.

  I pulled my salt flare from its holster. Morales pulled out his Glock and nodded. I opened the door wide enough for him to look inside. We paused to listen. When no sounds emerged, he ducked inside and I had his back.

  The door closed behind me, blocking out the sunlight and leaving the space unnaturally dark even though it was just after lunchtime. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkened hallway to look for signs of a threat.

  Even though I couldn’t see well, I could certainly smell. The acidic stench of vomit hit my nose like a punch.

  All of the treatment-room doors were closed and no light came from below. We made quick work of clearing those just in case before we headed toward the storeroom and office. That doorway was open and light spilled from it into the hall.

  Signaling to each other, we took position to execute a safe entry into the room. If someone was in there, and armed, they could easily set up facing the doorway and take us out. He nodded to me to begin the process.

  “Babylon Police,” I called out. Since I was still a detective, I usually led with that because the MEA tended to make for itchy trigger fingers.

  Morales grabbed a towel from a nearby table. He waved it across the doorway. When no shots rang out, he spun and fell into a crouch with his gun pointed into the room. “Clear,” he said, moving out of the death funnel.

  We walked around the shelving and froze.

  Krystal’s body lay in a puddle of yellow vomit. Blue light from the screens above her cast the body in a ghostly light.

  “That explains the smell,” I said.

  Morales tiptoed over the mess to squat next to her to check the pulse. After a moment, he shook his head and rose.

  I didn’t see any signs of a struggle. But she had no wounds that we could see, and the broken teapot near the body had probably been knocked over when she fell.

  We stepped out of the room so we wouldn’t contaminate the crime scene.

  “I’ll call Gardner,” he said. “You call Duffy.”

  I cursed under my breath. “We’re never going to hear the end of this.”

  * * *

  Two hours later, Duffy was still not talking to us. As he watched Franklin and the CSI crew work, he would occasionally look over and shake his head. Meanwhile, Gardner and Eldritch were across the room, having a heated discussion that we’d probably be hearing about soon.

  I couldn’t blame Duffy for being pissed, but I wasn’t feeling so chipper myself.

  Morales took a sip of weak coffee and winced. “Think they’d notice if we snuck off to a bar?”

  “Don’t tempt me.”

  Before he could deliver the retort on his smiling lips, a uniformed officer ducked into the hallway from the front room. The entrance to the massage joint had been opened up and the people milled around the waiting room as they processed the scene or worked some other angle of the case. I didn’t recognize the uni, but he looked like he’d worked enough scenes to not be a problem. “Prospero?” he called, looking around.

  I walked over. “Yeah?”

  “The receptionist is here.”

  “Thanks.” I waved Morales over. We’d sent a couple of patrolmen to the receptionist’s house to bring her in for questioning. Even though it was technically a murder scene and fell under Duffy’s purview, we were proceeding as if we were in charge until a victor was declared following Eldritch and Gardner’s argument.

  Out in the waiting room, the receptionist we’d seen the first time we’d come to the parlor waited by the front desk. She wore a pair of yoga pants and a hot pink T-shirt with the word Sassy airbrushed across her fake boobs.

  “Ms. Harper?” I said, approaching her. “If you’ll follow us?”

  According to the records we found in the filing cabinet, Felicia Harper had worked for Krystal since the massage parlor opened. Her address was in a Mundane neighborhood where the ratio of liquor stores to schools was five to one. She had no priors, but based on the way she was working the wad of chewing gum in her mouth, I was prepared to arrest her for disturbing my peace.

  The uni had set up a makeshift interview space in the first treatment room. It held a massage table covered in white paper and two straight-backed chairs. I motioned for her to take a seat up on the table. The paper crinkled as she climbed on.

  “What is this all about?” she said. “I do not appreciate being pulled away from my stories without an explanation.”

  “Weren’t you supposed to be working today?” I asked.

  She nodded. “I came this morning, but the door was locked. I tried to call Krystal like five times, but she didn’t answer.” She smacked her gum like most people used punctuation.

  “You didn’t have a key?”

  “Only Krystal has a key. The girl’s got trust issues.”

  Considering she was dead in a puddle of vomit, I had trouble judging Krystal for that personality deficit. Besides, she had plenty of other ones to resent.

  I also noted she used the present tense. She didn’t strike me as smart enough to be a good-enough actress to pull off that sort of misdirection if she had been the killer.

  “What’d you do when Krystal didn’t answer?” Morales asked.

  She shrugged. “I went home.”

  “It didn’t occur to you that something might be wrong?”

  “Not really.” Smack, smack, smack. “This wasn’t the first time she didn’t show up to open the place. I left because I didn’t want to have to deal with bitching from a bunch of horny guys who couldn’t get their wieners yanked, you know?”

  I looked down at my paper to cover my smile. Morales, much better at maintaining his poker face than I, soldiered on. “Can anyone verify what time you got home?”

  “My neighbor saw me come home. She was unloading some groceries from her car and I waved.”

  “And her name?”

  She offered it.

  “When was the last time you saw Krystal?” Morales asked.

  She looked up as if thinking back and methodically chewed like a cow enjoying some cud. “Last night. She was in her office. She asked me to stay and clean the treatment rooms, but I told her I was off the clock.”

  “Did she argue with you?”

  She shook her head. “Nah, she seemed distracted. Told me to go ahead and go. Said she’d lock up.”

  “What was distracting her?” I asked.

  “She was opening a package.”

  “Any idea what was in it?”

  “Like a teapot thingy.”

  My brows shot up. It had to have been the one I’d seen broken next to the body. “Did she say who it was from?”

  “I asked her.” Smack, smack. “She didn’t answer. There was a card, though. I saw her tuck it in her bra.”

  Morales and I nodded, as if she’d said something of little consequence, but my blood pressure had just shot up. I pulled out my phone and texted to Franklin. Someone sent the teapot last night. Check the vic’s bra for a gift note.

  “You still haven’t told me what happened. Were we robbed or something?” She looked around the room as if it might hold clues.

  My phone dinged. Bra, got it.

  I loved that Franklin didn’t demand an
explanation. He just got to work. Total pro, that guy.

  I nodded at Morales to let him know Franklin was on it. He acknowledged it with a quick nod and turned to speak to Felicia.

  “Krystal was found dead in her office. I’m sorry.”

  She stopped her smacking for one blessed moment. “Oh.” And then it resumed.

  “Oh?” I frowned at her. “That’s all?”

  “Well, whadaya want from me?” She snorted. “She didn’t pay me enough for tears.”

  Morales glanced at me and shrugged.

  “Do you know of anyone who might have held a grudge against Krystal?”

  “Oh, shit, lady.” She cackled. “How much time you got?”

  “Detective,” I muttered.

  Morales placed a hand on my shoulder. “Does anyone in particular come to mind? Have you witnessed any recent altercations with anyone?”

  She studied her fingernails for a moment. “I dunno. I mean, a couple of days ago, that Chinaman came in and was hollering about his payment.”

  “What was his name?” I asked even though I knew who it was.

  “Fuck if I know. He didn’t exactly make small talk, ya know?” She waved her hand and smacked her gum. “All’s I know is he comes by once a week to pick up money. He’s a real asshole. Acting all high and mighty when I don’t have the package ready the second he comes in the door.”

  She smacked the gum philosophically for a moment before continuing. “Anyway, he came in a couple of days ago. I ran out to grab some food, so Krystal was working the desk. When I got back, she and this guy were facing off in the lobby. He was shouting or whatever.”

  “What did he say?” I asked.

  She shrugged.

  “What did Krystal do?”

  “She said that she’d bring him the package the next day. Something about her boss being behind or something.”

  “Her boss?”

  “That’s what she said.”