Drowning in Amber (A Marie Jenner Mystery Book 2)

by E. C. Bell

  “And a coffee,” I said, and scooped up my purse.

  He sighed. “And a coffee.”

  James saw the first tail before we’d gone five blocks.

  He glanced into the rearview mirror, frowned, and looked again, more intently.

  “Something wrong?” I asked.

  “I think we’re being followed,” he said. He frowned more ferociously. “But I don’t think it’s the cops. Unless the cops are now driving Escalades.”

  I felt a jolt of pure fear. “Do you think it could be that Ambrose Welch guy?”

  “No idea,” he muttered. “Time to lose them, whoever they are.”

  I blinked. “You can do that?”

  “Of course,” he scoffed. “Watch me.”

  He zigzagged through the traffic, and for a while the SUV kept up. I watched it maneuver through the traffic, slewing and squealing its tires as its driver fought to keep it under control. Then I frowned and turned to James.

  “I think somebody’s following them,” I whispered.

  “What?” James glared into the rearview mirror. “Where?”

  “The car behind the SUV. That dark blue one. I swear, it’s going everywhere we go.”

  “Good grief,” he muttered.

  “Are they following the Escalade—or are they following us, too?” I asked.

  James shrugged. “Who knows? Who cares? I’ll lose ‘em both.”

  And he did. As soon as we no longer saw either vehicle behind us, James pulled into a long-term parking garage and parked the car. We sat in it, in silence, and listened to the motor tick and ping as it slowly cooled.

  “What do we do now?” I finally asked.

  “We take a cab,” James said. His face looked as tight as his voice sounded. “We have to get Honoria to the safe house, and then we need to figure out why we’re being tailed by nearly everyone in the city.”

  Good grief.

  The Chapters bookstore on Whyte Avenue was something to see, I have to admit. I didn’t get down to the shabby chic part of the city much and had never even put a foot in the bookstore, though I had been to “Pigs Can Fly” across the street, once, when I was flush and wanted to find quirky cute Christmas gifts for my family units.

  The thing that really hit me when James and I first walked in was the amount of stuff for sale that had nothing to do with books.

  “What’s the deal?” I asked, pointing at the multitude of shelves filled with everything under the sun that was not a book.

  “It’s a fad,” James replied. “Just trying to get people like you in here. Once everybody’s hooked on books again, it’ll disappear.”

  I picked up a coffee mug with “Kiss Me I’m a Reader” on it, put it down, and picked up some sort of chocolate-covered candy that I’d never seen anywhere before. “I wouldn’t count on it. We nonreaders are pretty set in our ways.” I put down the candy and picked up a blanket. “This is pretty, though. And so soft . . .” I put it down, regretfully.

  “What about the blanket, instead of a coffee?”

  “I’m not buying you a blanket at a bookstore,” he said. “Let’s find Honoria. She’s upstairs.”

  As we walked further in, James’s head was on a swivel.

  “Do you see anyone?”

  “No.” He glanced down at me, and then turned his gaze back to everywhere else. “Looks like we’re alone.”

  “Good.” I sighed out my relief. “Where’s Honoria?”

  “In the washroom at the back of the store.”

  We walked through what felt like miles of racks of books, to the far wall of the store, and then followed it to the restrooms.

  “Go get her,” he said, pointing. “She said she’d wait for us in there.”

  So I did. Much as I didn’t want to.

  I walked into the washroom and frowned. It appeared empty. I bent down, looking under the line of stall doors, but saw no feet.

  “Honoria?” I called, softly. “Are you here?”

  I heard noise from the stall furthest from the door. “Is that you, Marie?”

  “Yes. James is just outside. We should go.”

  She opened the stall door and stepped out. She looked around, as though making sure for herself that we were alone, then hitched the big backpack she was carrying a little higher on her shoulder.

  “This sure is a mess, isn’t it?” she said. “Now I can’t even go home.”

  I knew how that felt, and felt a twinge of sympathy for her.

  “It won’t be for long,” I said.

  “Can you guarantee that?” she asked.

  I looked into her angry eyes, and then down at the floor. “No.”

  “Well, you better figure this out, quick,” she said. “I’m not going to let my life fall apart. Not again. Fix it, any way you can.”

  “We’re doing our best,” I muttered, glancing longingly at the door.

  “You better figure out how to do better,” she replied. “You know what’s at stake, after all.”

  Then, before I had a chance to even think of anything to say, she pointed to the door.

  “Let’s get out of here, shall we?”

  I stared at her for a long moment, mesmerized by the tremour at the edge of her left eyelid. I should have felt more sympathy for her. Empathy, even. But all I felt was a dull, red anger. She’d threatened me. Again.

  “Okay,” I said, and held the door open, letting her leave first.

  The escape from the bookstore was remarkably uneventful. We stepped out of the washroom, and James walked up to us. His head was back on the swivel again, so that he barely looked at either of us as he jerked his thumb in the direction of the stairs.

  Without a word, Honoria and I followed him down the stairs and to the main entrance. The place was full of people, and I had a bad moment or two when I lost him in the stupid bookcases, but Honoria didn’t seem to have the same problem, so I trailed along behind her, feeling absolutely like a hanger-on, and a useless one at that.

  James got to the front entrance and held his hand up, indicating we should stop. So we did, good soldiers that we were, and I ran my hand over the incredibly soft blanket one last time as we waited for him to let us know it was time to leave.

  It only took a moment, and he was back beside us.

  “I have a cab,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  Honoria didn’t even ask about the cab situation. Just followed James out to the crowded sidewalk, stepped into the cab, and settled on the seat with a small sigh.

  But I didn’t move.

  “Come on,” James said. “We gotta go.”

  “I have something I have to do,” I said, and pointed down the street, vaguely. “Call me when you have her settled.”

  I didn’t really want to ride in the cab with Honoria. Didn’t want to go to her new hideout and sit around drinking herbal tea and chitchatting, or whatever James was going to do to calm down our brand-new client.

  He could handle her. I was going to go and find Luke, Stewart’s dead son, if he was still on this plane. And I was going to get answers. Finally.

  I steeled myself for the inevitable fight and was surprised beyond measure when James said, “No problem.” Almost too agreeably, I thought. And then, they were gone.

  He hadn’t even told me where he was taking her. Like it was a big secret, even from me.

  “What? Don’t you trust me?” I muttered, then gave my head a shake. Good grief! I was acting like a teenage girl. All he was doing was making certain that our client was safe.

  I had to get over myself, get my part of the job done, and then she’d be gone. Out of our lives forever.

  Just like I wanted.

  I WATCHED THE cab disappear down the congested street, and then turned the other way. I had to get to Stewart’s house and talk to Stewart’s dead son. He would probably have information about his father—and, if his father was involved at all, he would have information about what happened to Eddie.

  Then I could jog Eddie’s memory, a
nd get him to see—really see—who had done this to him. I believed this was what was holding him so tightly to this plane. If he knew the answer, that should give him the impetus to move on. It would also tell us who the police should really be investigating, and one way or the other, this would get Honoria out of our lives.

  And then, true sleuth that I was, I caught the number eight bus to Stewart’s house.

  TO TELL YOU the truth, Stewart’s place didn’t look like a monster’s house. It just looked like a nice enough split-level in an older section of north Edmonton, up by the Londonderry Mall. The grass needed to be cut, but it was only one week scruffy, not “call in the City and do something about this nightmare yard.” But it still didn’t make me like the man.

  I walked up the sidewalk slowly, wishing I knew for sure that Stewart was still at work. I did not want to have a confrontation with him on his home turf. He could make my life extremely miserable if he even suspected I was checking up on him.

  Mail was still in the mailbox. I hoped he was one of those freaks who felt compelled to empty his mailbox every day and that this was an indication that he was not yet home.

  After a quick glance around, I walked up the steps and pressed the doorbell. As I heard it chime inside, I skittered down the steps and hid beside some bushes.

  I stiffened as I heard a voice screech, “Nobody’s home!” It was hard to tell if it was coming from inside or outside the house. I couldn’t see into the big front windows, because the curtains were closed. If I was hearing Stewart, and if he pushed the curtains back to see who was harassing him, great. Just as long as he didn’t actually see me, all would be well.

  But if it was Luke, that was a different story. He didn’t have the capacity to push back the curtains—or anything else. My only hope was, if I bothered him enough, he would want to see who it was. Then, maybe, I could talk him into stepping out on the front step to have a chat with me.

  No movement from the curtains, and the yelling had stopped, so I snuck up the stairs and pressed the doorbell again, feeling like I was a kid playing a bad joke on a next-door neighbour. Then I scurried back to the bush and hid.

  The screeching started as soon as the doorbell chimed. Whoever it was, he was pissed.

  “I said no one’s home! Get the hell away!”

  Still no movement that I could see. I wondered if maybe whoever was yelling wasn’t using the front window to check, but another window in the house. Maybe the one above my head. Now that would have been embarrassing. I scuttled back, still on my haunches, and tried to see into the window on the second floor. Nothing.

  I waited a moment more, then squat-ran back to the front step. My legs were starting to cramp, and I thought, as I pressed the doorbell once more, that maybe I should start exercising or something.

  “I said there is no one home!” The ghost—I assumed it was Luke—slammed through the front door, wild-eyed and spewing ecto goo everywhere. “Get the hell out of here!”

  And then he stepped right into me.

  He was cold, and angry. But overlaying all of it was a sadness so profound I almost burst into tears as I scrabbled my way down the stairs, clinging to the bannister to keep from falling. Luke wasn’t a drug overdose. He was a suicide. I was definitely dealing with a suicide.

  Made sense, actually. Suicides cling to this plane of existence even harder than drug overdoses. I personally think it has something to do with the people around them being so overwhelmingly distraught. It’s like they cling to the spirit of the suicide, holding them here. And it makes suicides some of the crankiest spirits to work with, on top of everything else.

  My reaction seemed to surprise him. He had been dead for months, and he’d obviously stepped into people before. Probably many, many times. But he’d obviously never had anyone do much more than a little shudder as though they’d been hit with a chill.

  “What the hell?” he muttered and, luckily for me, stepped back into the door and away from me.

  “Thanks,” I said, trying to pull myself together so I could keep the ghost talking and maybe get some information out of him. I snuffled once and wiped the tears from my eyes, because the overwhelming sadness had receded as soon as I had lost contact with him. “That was—thanks.”

  “Who the hell are you?” He glared at me, his face floating in the door panel like a drowning victim in a lake of glass.

  “My name is Marie Jenner,” I said. I took one last swipe at my eyes and tried to arrange my features so I seemed friendly and nonthreatening. I had no idea if it worked or not, because Luke’s drowning eyes stared at me like they were dead. Which, I guess, they were, but I wasn’t used to seeing no emotion on a ghost’s face. Not after stepping into him, and knowing, by feel, that he was suffering mightily. “I need to talk to you about your father. And Eddie.”

  “Eddie?” Finally, emotion touched his eyes. Unfortunately, it was confusion. “What about him?”

  Crap. He didn’t know about Eddie. As much as I hated telling the living about the passing of a loved one, I hated telling the dead even more. Don’t ask me why. Guess it’s because it feels like the dead have already been slapped enough.

  “I—he died, Luke. I’m sorry.”

  Luke’s eyes closed for a moment, then opened, and he stepped out of the door and into the warm, still air outside. “What happened? Overdose?”

  “No.” I tried desperately to think of a nice way to say what had to be said, but knew there was no way. “I’m sorry, Luke. He was murdered.”

  “Oh.” Luke’s voice stayed completely neutral, as though my words had not registered, but as he spoke that one-syllable sentence, his legs folded under him and he sank to the cement.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought your dad would’ve mentioned it.”

  Hoped, really, but Luke shook his head.

  “It’s not like he knows I’m here,” he said. “And trust me, he doesn’t get any visitors. Not since Mom died.”

  “Oh.”

  “Not your fault my dad’s an A number one asshole.” Then he looked at me with something close to humour on his face. “Is it? It would be nice to have someone else to blame, actually. If this is your fault, let me know. I am getting pretty bored hating him for the train wreck he made of our lives.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I only met the man a few days ago.”

  “Hey, I would have been surprised if you had been involved in any way with my father,” he replied. “He doesn’t care about women, much. Doesn’t care about anything human, really. Just the law.”

  He said “the law” as though it was one of the dirtiest phrases he could think of. I imagined in this house it was.

  “I do know Eddie, though,” I said. I sat down on the lowest step of the front stairs, carefully staying away from Luke. I didn’t want another crying jag. I needed to get information from him, and me blubbering like a fool wouldn’t invite trust. Or sharing, I imagined.

  “You date him or something?”

  “No!” I almost laughed out loud at the idea of dating a ghost. That was almost as bad an idea as dating the living. “I met him after he—passed.”

  “Oh.” He frowned as though trying to wrap his head around this bit of information. “So, what’s the deal with you anyhow?”

  “I—can see the dead.”

  “I get that,” he replied. He showed impatience at my apparent thickness, and I couldn’t really blame him. Talk about stating the obvious. “Is that your whole thing? You can see us, so you get off walking around and talking to us?”

  “Not really.” Like not at all. “I’m helping Eddie move on. He talked about you—so I thought you might have information about his death that could help him.”

  “And this information would be about my father, I assume.”

  Quick study, this one. “Eddie did say your father didn’t like him much.”

  “Hated his guts would be more like it,” Luke replied. “Do you really think he would have done that? Killed Eddie?”

&n
bsp; “What do you think?”

  “I think he’s hurt a lot of people in his life. Wouldn’t surprise me at all if he killed some of them.” He frowned. “How long?”

  “How long what?”

  “Since Eddie—you know.”

  “Oh!” Dammit. Why couldn’t I be better at this questioning thing? “It’s been a few days. Why?”

  “Because a while ago, Dad started drinking again. A lot. I thought it was odd.”

  “Do you think it could have been because of—you?”

  Luke snorted humourlessly. “No. He held it together wonderfully well after I died. Got himself a new job and everything. No, it was after that, I think. A couple of months ago. But I could be wrong about that. The days start to bleed together, you know?”

  I didn’t answer him, because an old guy, walking an even older dog, was staring at me suspiciously. I didn’t exactly blame him, because it would have looked like I was sitting on an empty stoop, talking to the closed door.

  “We have company,” I whispered.

  “It’s old man Rogers. Watch, he’ll let that dog crap on our front lawn. I guarantee it.”

  I stood as old man Rogers stopped right in front of the house, and his ancient dog hunched and shuddered its way to the middle of the lawn and then did its business.

  “See?” Luke yelled. “I told you. Every freaking day!”

  The old man didn’t respond, of course. But Luke was upset.

  “I can’t watch that,” he said. “I’m leaving.”

  “Can I come back?” I whispered.

  “Yeah,” Luke said. “Tell Eddie I’m sorry he’s dead. I wish—well, I wish it had worked out differently. For both of us.”

  I didn’t answer him. And I didn’t answer old man Rogers when he finally saw me and dragged his dog back on to the sidewalk, growling, “Can I help you?” in his whiny voice. I had to go back to the office and see if I could figure out what had happened that would have pushed Stewart back to drinking.

  If his son’s death hadn’t done it, what could have happened? What did he do?

  THE BUS RIDE was quiet, and I got back to the office with a new game plan. I’d found Stewart’s son, and something had happened to Stewart a few months before that had pushed him back on the alcoholic train. I’d go back online and see if I could find anything that had happened in the city around that time that could have sent him over the edge.