by E. C. Bell
Angus Stewart. The police officer who had arrested me at the park. The father of Eddie’s best friend, who had died of a drug overdose, who was now waging his own personal war on drugs in the city of Edmonton.
He looked just as angry as Worth, and my anxiety level spiked again. I wondered briefly if a person could actually die from too much adrenaline.
“So, these are the two idiots,” he said.
My first impulse was to say, “Nope, you have the wrong two idiots,” but luckily, I continued to keep my head down and my mouth shut.
James, not so much.
“I don’t think we did anything to—” he started, stopping when Worth snapped her fingers in front of his face.
“Yes,” she said, as though James hadn’t spoken.
“You guys gotta get outta here,” Eddie whispered. I didn’t even venture a glance in his direction, but could feel the fear and anger wafting off him in waves.
“Aren’t you listening?” Eddie cried. I kept staring at my feet, hoping he’d shut up. He didn’t.
“You have to listen to me! This is one dangerous guy! You can’t—”
“My name is Marie Jenner,” I said, and stood, reaching mostly through Eddie, in a futile attempt to shut him up. He shuddered and moved away.
“Don’t do that,” he said. “You’re messing with my high.”
“Tell her to sit down,” Stewart said to Worth, ignoring my outstretched hand.
Before she had a chance to speak, I sat and held one hand down by my side, attempting to signal to Eddie to shut the hell up. James glanced in my direction.
“Are you all right?” he whispered.
“Yes, fine,” I whispered back. “We just have to be quiet while the officer tells us how we wrecked his operation.”
James nodded, but it was Eddie I was trying to make understand. He stared at me for a moment, then nodded his head, indicating that he got it. Finally!
“Exactly,” Worth said. “So shut up, both of you.”
We both stared back down at our shoes.
“Do you two have any idea what you did?” Stewart asked, his voice rough with badly suppressed anger.
I snuck a glance at James, wondering how we were going to get out of this nasty catch-22 situation. He looked as trapped as I felt. Surprisingly, Worth saved us.
“No,” she said. “They have no idea.”
“You blew our best chance to clean up this city,” Stewart said. “The top dog was there—at the park—just before the raid. We finally had a shot at him.” He glared at both of us. “Then you—” He pointed at me, and I felt my face heat. “You spoke to his men. Whatever the hell you said to them scared him off. He left minutes—” He slammed his fist into his open hand, and both James and I jumped. “Fucking minutes before we came in! We finally had a real chance to see him, in the flesh. Arrest him and put a stop once and for all to what’s going on in that park—but you scared him off!”
“I’m sorry,” I said after a few uncomfortable moments when only the clock ticked and Stewart gasped his anger. “I didn’t know.”
“Damn right you didn’t know! Because you are an idiot! A moron! What the hell were you doing there?”
I glanced over at James. Same question Worth had asked, and I hoped James would continue to carry the ball. He didn’t let me down.
“She was there to find out what we could about Eddie Hansen’s death,” James said. He turned and faced Stewart. “For me.”
“Brown Eddie?” Stewart asked, and I noticed his breathing slowed. He hadn’t been expecting that answer. “Why would you care about the death of a two-bit junkie?”
I froze, expecting an outburst from Eddie, but he said nothing. I glanced in his direction, but could not read his face.
“I am a private investigator,” James said, “and I was representing my client. That’s all I can tell you.”
Stewart stared, his eyes mere slits, as though he was looking through us rather than at us. James had hit an inadvertent bull’s-eye.
“Are you talking about Honoria Lowe?” he asked.
James blinked.
“Do you know the name?” Worth asked. “Is that who your client is?”
James didn’t answer, but it didn’t seem to matter. Stewart stared past us with a thousand-yard stare that chilled me. Then he shook his head, turned on his heel, and marched out of the office without another word.
“Stewart?” Worth asked. “Who is Honoria Lowe?”
The door slammed shut.
“Stewart!” she cried.
The door remained shut.
“Dammit,” she muttered.
James and I turned back to her and waited as she straightened her desk, obviously trying to salvage a situation that had spun out of control. The moments stretched to a minute, and then two. She finally looked up at us and frowned.
“So, who is Honoria Lowe?” she asked James. “And why didn’t you tell me about her?”
“Because I don’t need to tell you who my clients are,” James replied, a little snippily. I kept my mouth shut tight and looked back down at my shoes.
“You should tell me everything I want to know,” Worth said, just as snippily. “If you want me to keep pulling your fat from the fire.”
“I’ll take that under advisement,” James said.
“Stay away from the park.”
“Is Stewart going to raid it again?” James asked.
“That’s none of your business.”
“Yep,” Eddie whispered. “’Cause that’s what that bastard does. That’s all he does.”
“Just stay away from the park,” Worth said.
“Okay.”
“And get a licence.”
“Yes.”
“Seventeen days.”
“I remember.”
“Get out.”
She pointed at the door. James and I scrambled up out of our seats and left her office as quickly as we could. Eddie silently followed.
We wound our way through the rabbit’s warren of offices and cubicles and finally found our way to the parking garage.
“What was all that about?” I finally asked.
“I don’t know,” James replied, unlocking the door to the car and holding it open for me.
Eddie slid in the back seat as James walked around the car.
“So what do you think?” I whispered to Eddie.
“I think Stewart will go after the blonde chick now,” he said.
“I think you’re right. And it has nothing to do with drugs. Did you see that look on his face?”
Eddie shuddered. “It has to do with me. My death.”
“I think you’re right.”
James still wasn’t at the driver’s door. I peeked out the back window and saw that he’d stopped. He had his cell phone to his ear and was in deep conversation with someone. We still had a minute or two more.
“That son of a bitch will want to know what she knows, and he won’t care who finds out. If Sonny and R see the cops going into her building, they might think that she’s giving them information,” Eddie said.
“How would those guys know if the police were going to talk to Honoria?” I asked. “Even though she does live right across the street from the park, they don’t know her.”
“But they know about her.”
I blinked. “How do they know about her?”
“Because you asked Noreen about her,” Eddie said. “Noreen would have told R everything you’d talked about.” He smiled. “Including the Honoria chick.”
I felt sick. “But she doesn’t know anything,” I said. “Not about them.”
“They don’t know that.”
“What are we going to do?”
James slid the key into the driver’s door and opened it.
“I don’t know,” Eddie said. “But I’m thinking they will want to find out exactly what it is she knows. So, even if that son of bitch Stewart doesn’t do anything to her, Sonny and R will. Bad news for her, either way.”
I couldn’t answer him. And not just because James was in the car, either. I literally did not know how to respond to him. All I did know was our client was definitely in trouble, and I was the one who had put her there.
“You gotta fix this,” Eddie said. “You know that, don’t you?”
Then, before I could even nod, he stepped out of the car and disappeared.
“We should get some lunch,” James said. “You hungry?”
I shook my head. I didn’t think I’d ever be hungry again. “We have to tell Honoria about Stewart. He’s going to make real trouble for her. Don’t you think?”
“Already done.” James put the car into drive and pulled out of the parking lot. “I called her and told her what had happened. She said that she expected us to find her somewhere safe to hide until ‘all this foolishness is over.’ She said she didn’t want to stay at her place. That she doesn’t feel safe anymore.” He smiled sheepishly. “I told her I’d find her a place to stay until we solve her case.”
“Oh.” I felt my shoulders relax and then tighten again, maddeningly. I’d been hoping she’d tell us to sod off or something, since all we seemed to be bringing down on her was more and more grief. “Does this mean you’ve decided to take her case?”
“Well, yeah.”
I glanced over at him and saw his face redden. My God, he was blushing!
“Why did you decide that?” I asked, a little more sharply than I probably should have. “I thought you didn’t trust her. Thought she was conning us—”
“I feel like we owe her.”
“Owe her?”
“Yeah. For the cops. You can bet that Stewart jerk is going to dig into every aspect of her life now that he knows she hired us. And maybe even for the drug dealers hanging around in front of her place. If they figure out she knows something—anything—about Edward’s death and that the police are involved, they’ll never leave her alone. They might hurt her. Even kill her.” He shuddered. “Her life is tough enough, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is.”
“So, let’s get her out of harm’s way.”
“Okay.”
Even though it was what I wanted for her, I still felt a twinge of something uncomfortable. Was it jealousy?
It couldn’t be.
It had better not be.
“She’s going to the Chapters on Whyte. We’ll pick her up there.”
“You better not be thinking of bringing her to the office,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything worse than having her staring at me, while I tried to work.
“No,” he said. “I’ll get her a cheap motel room for a couple of days, until we can work out something better.” He sighed. “Maybe a couple of days is all we’ll need.”
“So, we’re going to figure out who killed Eddie,” I said.
“Yep, I guess we are,” James replied.
“And we’re being paid for it.”
“Yes. It’s a real case.”
“Is that why you told Sergeant Worth you were keeping the office open? Why you’re getting your own licence?”
“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe it’s because she pushed me.” He smiled at me. “I don’t much like being pushed.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “But really? Just because she pushed you?”
“Nah, it wasn’t that. Not really. I liked working with my uncle. I did. I realized it was just fear holding me back. So, I decided, what the heck. Right?” He smiled. “So, you jumping with me?”
If there was ever a time that I should have said “No frigging way,” it was this one. But I was the one who had originally said yes to Honoria. And I was the one who kept trying to talk him into taking Honoria’s case. So I had to say yes.
Didn’t I?
“Yes.” I leaned back in my seat and felt my shoulders relax. “Yes, I will.”
“Excellent.” He smiled. “We have a couple of hours before we pick up Honoria, and no matter what you say, you must be hungry. Come on, let’s do lunch.”
He had it all worked out. Honoria would be safe, and he and I could work together on figuring out who had actually killed Eddie.
A business. He was opening an actual business, and he wanted me involved. This could be good. In fact, it could be great.
“I’d love to,” I said.
“Good.” He glanced a smile in my direction, then pulled out into traffic.
Now that the pressure was off, I was ravenous. Lunch sounded great.
Eddie:
I Should Get Clean. Really, I Should
I WENT TO the tree.
Don’t ask me why, because I wouldn’t be able to give you a straight answer. Part of me hoped I’d find a junkie sleeping nearby, because my nerves were starting to jangle something fierce and I knew that soon I wouldn’t be good for anything besides lying on the ground and puking my guts out. At least, that’s the way it was when I was alive.
Another part of me—the dead part, I’m thinking—didn’t want to do that. Didn’t want to feel that anymore. Didn’t particularly want to go through withdrawals, but really didn’t want to get high again. Life’s unfair. I got shit on for most of mine, but death? Death really levels the playing field. I was actually starting all over again. All I had to do was decide not to go that route. Get clean and stay that way. Then go on to the next thing. Whatever the hell that was.
There weren’t many of my own people around at that hour. Nobody sleeping off a drunk or a high, anyhow. Just civilians in their nice clothes, with their lunches in brown paper sacks clutched in their hands, looking for a place to chow down. They all skittered past the churchyard and the tree, opting for the cement monument known as Churchill Square. Didn’t blame them. I could still see blood, dirty brown and flaking away, but still there, on the tree, and the gouges on the branches were still bleeding clear sap. Only a freak would eat at a murder scene.
Yeah, I know, stupid. Seeing that horrible tree freaked me out, and I just wanted to get away from it. So I ran back to the park and waited for Crank to show up. I pretended it was so I could eavesdrop on whatever bit of gossip he was going to spill, but really, it was so I could hook up with one of his early customers and steal a hit. Just to get me over this rough patch.
I’m just as weak dead as I was alive.
Marie:
It Should Have Been the Beginning of a
Beautiful Friendship . . . .
JAMES AND I picked up burgers and fries and headed back to the office. I thought we were going to eat together, but James clinked plastic glasses with me, said, “Welcome on board,” then grabbed his food and headed for the inner office.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“I have to set up a safe place for Honoria,” he replied. “Just trying to get ahead of the curve for once. You okay out here by yourself?”
“I guess,” I said, even though I wasn’t. I’d been looking forward to sitting with him, talking to him while we ate. Just spending a little bit of time together that wasn’t work-related.
But he walked into his office and shut the door on me. So, as I ate my burger, I decided to do a little more research. About Ambrose Welch, this time.
What I found was exactly nothing.
How could that be? If the police knew him, there had to be something online about him. But there was nothing. It was like he wasn’t a real person.
“Maybe because he isn’t,” I muttered. Ambrose Welch was probably not his real name. But how would I find out his real name? I had no idea and reluctantly put that research aside.
I’d do more checking about Stewart, then. Specifically, more research about his son, Luke.
Luke had died at home, and I still hadn’t determined how he’d died. Not really. But I was beginning to lean more toward drug overdose than bad drugs. There were no other newspaper articles about deaths related to bad drugs, anyhow. So I dug deeper.
I found his obituary notice and checked to see where donations in lieu of flowers could be sent, hoping I’d be a
ble to tell from that what had happened to him.
I shouldn’t have been surprised to see that good old dad had decided that donations to a cop fund were good enough for his son’s memory. No clue about how he died from that.
So why was I trying to figure out how Luke died? Because I thought that maybe—just maybe—if Luke had died from a drug overdose, he might still be where he died, even if it was six months before.
And if Luke died at home, and was still there, he might be able to tell me whether his father had a hand in Eddie’s death.
Yes, I was seriously thinking about going to the house of the police officer who had threatened both James and me, to talk to his dead son.
“Did you find something?”
I jumped, then glared at James, who had somehow snuck out of his office without my hearing. “Make more noise, would you?”
“I’m like a panther,” he said, grinning. “So what did you find?”
I clicked everything closed. He didn’t need to know I was checking out Stewart’s son. Not yet. “Nothing much.”
I half-expected him to demand to see what I was looking at, but all he did was grab his coat.
“Where are you going?”
“I found a place for Honoria to stay,” he said. “I’m going to get her. Wanna come?”
I sure didn’t want to be face to face with Honoria again. What if she said something about me? About my “gift.” Even in passing. I inwardly shuddered and turned back to the computer. “I have a little more research to do. Mind if I sit this one out?”
“Oh come on,” he said. “What, are you afraid that going to a bookstore could infect you or something?” He grinned, and I reluctantly grinned back, and just as reluctantly, reached for my sweater.
“I’m not afraid of going to a bookstore,” I said. “Will you buy me a coffee?”
He shook his head. “I was half-hoping you’d want a book.”
I shook my head.
“Magazine?”
Another head shake. “Just a coffee.”
“You’re a cheap date,” he said. And then before I could respond to the date thing, he opened the door. “Let’s go get our client.”
