Hex on the Ex

by Rochelle Staab

  So much for my theory. If Laycee’s phone was turned off, Forrest had no fast means to find her. He assumed she was with me. I understood his fury toward Jarret after he learned the truth. Forrest was hurt, jealous, cuckolded, and heartbroken. I pitied him for the pain he suffered.

  That left me with Margaret Smith and the mysterious woman who gave Schelz’s pamphlet to Weisel. One and the same or two different people? I glanced across the table at Jarret—handsome, charming, with a strong instinct for self-preservation. If Jarret knew Margaret linked him to the symbol, he might lie to protect himself whether he was innocent or guilty. And worse, if I told him about her connection to Herrick Schelz, Jarret’s scum of a lawyer might find a way to twist the knowledge against me.

  Exhausted from making assumptions, I leaned back against the wooden bench. Panicked and paranoid—not exactly the state of mind I was shooting for.

  Across the aisle, a couple whispered and glanced in our direction. I opened a menu in front of my face.

  “I got the autographed baseball for your dad,” Jarret said. “It’s up at the house. Do you still want to give it to him for his birthday?”

  If I said yes I’d have to meet Jarret again tomorrow. Saying no meant between now and the party I’d have to shop for a replacement gift for Dad—the man impossible to shop for—and who knew if I would end up spending the day at the station with Carla, or worse. I loved Dad too much to disappoint him.

  “Thank you, Jarret. Dad will love the ball.”

  “Good, because it was embarrassing to ask for autographs and then lose to the Cubs on the same night. The ball is on the table inside my front door. You can swing by anytime tomorrow to pick it up.”

  “Give me a time and I’ll meet you there. I’m not going into your empty house alone again.”

  “The first pitch is at twelve-thirty. I should be home by six unless we go into extra innings. I’ll text you after the game. We’ll set a time.” He glanced at the menu then closed it on the table. “I hear you’ve been working out at Game On.”

  “Only for a few days until my bathrooms are finished.” I scanned the main courses. Chicken or fish? Fish or chicken?

  “The gym is doing business. Kyle is turning a profit,” he said.

  “For your partnership or himself?”

  Jarret tipped down my menu, narrowing his eyes at me. “Why would you say that? Laycee made a snide remark about Kyle’s money that night at Fifth Base.”

  Insecure Laycee made people squirm to feel superior but she jabbed with nasty or embarrassing truths, never fiction. Did provoking Kyle get her killed?

  “How did Kyle respond?”

  “He ignored her. So did I. You know Laycee—she teased people for a reaction.”

  Our waiter appeared again. “How are you folks doing? Ready yet?”

  I selected grilled salmon; Jarret ordered a New York steak, rare. Appetizers? No. Salad? No. The waiter collected our menus and left us alone.

  “I assume your accountant is watching the books at Game On,” I said.

  “I told you, we’re turning a profit. Membership is up and costs are down. Besides, Kyle wouldn’t steal from me,” Jarret said. “I would know.”

  “I noticed Kyle holds a lot of closed-door meetings with an odd cast of characters.”

  “That’s how guys are. We like to hang out in private. You wouldn’t understand.” He looked down then back up at me again. “Odd in what way?”

  I described Kyle’s visitors and the meeting I had interrupted. “I heard Kyle was arrested for dealing drugs in Atlanta after we moved.”

  “Those charges were dropped.” Jarret rubbed his forehead. “I’ll ask Kyle about his meetings.”

  Hungry, and assured Jarret would be curious enough to follow through on Kyle, I buttered a slice of warm sourdough bread and popped a piece in my mouth, crunching on the savory combination. “Did the police let you go back home yet?”

  “Tomorrow. I don’t plan on living there much longer. That house has been bad luck for me ever since you moved out. I met with a real estate agent today. I’m going to sell it,” he said. “Now I have to decide where I want to live.”

  “Were you with a Realtor when I called this afternoon?” I said.

  “No. I spent a few hours with a friend.”

  “I thought you said business associate.”

  He took a drink of his beer. “Do we have to talk about this? You haven’t been interested in my social life lately.”

  “Friend.” No gender, just “friend.” What was he holding back? “You rarely talk about your friends. Were you with one of your teammates?”

  “I hung out with someone I don’t see very often. No one special. There’s nothing between us.”

  “An old friend? Like an old, old friend? From your hometown?”

  He rolled his eyes. “God. You’re not going to stop, are you?”

  “Nope.” I ripped off another piece of bread and took a bite.

  “She’s a girl I dated in high school, Liz. She moved out here recently and called me before I left for spring training. I took her out to dinner, curious to see how she held up. She was my first…” He wagged his eyebrows. “You know.”

  I gulped my bread. Moved here recently? Margaret Smith left the Bull Valley house in December. Dodger spring training began in March. His “hometown friend” fit right into the schedule. “First girl you had sex with?”

  “Uh-huh.” He winked. “My taste has improved since high school.”

  “What’s her name? Janie? Mary? Margaret?” I watched his face for a flicker of recognition.

  He grinned at me. “Are you jealous, Lizzie-Bear?”

  “Not even close.”

  “Then what’s the big deal?” he said. “Trust me, I’m not interested in her. She’s not my type. Forget about her. Let’s talk about something else.”

  Our waiter came down the aisle, balancing a loaded tray and placed it on a stand. “Hot plates,” he said, handling each dish with a napkin as he set our dinners in front of us. “Can I get you anything else? Refills?”

  We said no and thanked him. Jarret sliced into his steak and took a bite with relish. I picked at my fish, more interested in the woman from McHenry than in eating.

  “How nice of her to contact you after all these years,” I said. “It must be fun to reconnect with someone from the old hometown. Do you see her often?”

  “Nope. I’m on the road half the time and at the stadium almost every night when I’m here. Hell, you probably see her more than I do. She works out at Game On in the morning. A short brunette. Plain. On the chubby side.”

  Jarret dated models. His idea of chubby was any woman with hips.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Gretchen. Gretchen Kressler,” he said.

  I straightened back, curious. “I know Gretchen. In fact, I saw her at the game Tuesday night. Did you give her the tickets?”

  “Yeah. How did you guess?”

  “Gretchen told everyone at the gym that her boyfriend got her tickets.”

  He groaned. “Geez. Why would she say that? She knows I don’t have those kinds of feelings for her. I warned her not to talk about me around there. The tabloids bug me enough the way it is. What else is she telling people about me?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve only seen her at Game On a few times and once at the ballpark. To be fair, she didn’t call you by name when she talked about the tickets. And she still didn’t admit to knowing you when I bumped into her at the game and introduced myself.”

  “She didn’t recognize you? She saw your picture at the house. I told her all about you.”

  “Big difference between seeing me in person and seeing me in a photo. Did Gretchen know you were with Laycee Monday and Tuesday night?”

  He snorted. “What I do and who I see on a daily basis is none of Gretchen’s business. Kyle is the only one who knew I left with Laycee on Tuesday, and I didn’t tell him I saw her Monday. Why?”

  I put my fork down
and covered my half-eaten fish with my napkin. “I wonder if Gretchen is the jealous type. You might not have feelings for her, but she called you her boyfriend at least once. A small-town woman reconnecting with her first love, now a Major League Baseball player, sounds like the plot of a romance novel to me. Tell me you’re not having sex with her, Jarret.”

  He shrugged, curling his mouth into a bad-boy grin. “Maybe once. For old times’ sake.”

  Like I had to ask. Although I detested Laycee for sleeping with him in Atlanta, she had given me a tangible excuse to escape from his street-cat morals.

  “Is Kressler a married or maiden name?”

  “Her maiden name. She told me she never got married,” he said.

  The waiter asked if we wanted coffee or dessert. I turned down both. As Jarret and I rode the escalator down to the parking lot I wondered if Gretchen had an interest in the occult. What if she knew Margaret Smith?

  “Does Gretchen ever ask about your game-day superstitions?”

  “Hell, no. My rituals are sacred ground. You’re the only person who knows what I do,” Jarret said. “Gretch and I talk about the old times, baseball, and my plans after I retire. She’s interested in my career. She thinks I’d make a good TV sports analyst.” He checked his reflection in a slim metal strip on the wall. “What do you think?”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  To dodge the Friday-night restaurant and nightclub traffic on the boulevard, I took back-street shortcuts through Studio City to Nick’s bungalow in North Hollywood. All I wanted to do was take off my clothes and get into his bathtub, preferably surrounded by bubbles, ideally joined by Nick. My fantasy dissolved as soon as I pulled up at his house and saw Robin and Dave through the picture window, standing behind Nick at his desk.

  I climbed the porch steps and opened the door to a screechy blast of haunted-house organ music. I cupped my hands to call out over the noise, “Hello? Anybody home?”

  “Come here.” Robin waved me over to the desk. “You have to see this.”

  “Hey, babe. How was dinner?” Nick said without turning around.

  “Eventful. Forrest Huber attacked Jarret and nearly got himself carted off to jail.” The comment failed to draw attention. I edged between Robin and Dave, and rested my hands on Nick’s shoulders. “What are you watching?”

  “My friend at ATTAGIRL messengered me a DVD of the only TV special Billy Miles ever produced,” Robin said. “He blew almost a million dollars on the production, a Halloween special on nightmares. It never aired.”

  “Why not?” I said.

  She smiled. “Watch. You’ll see.”

  Dave shushed us. “Here comes the good part.”

  Six figures with heads and bodies covered in hooded black robes, stood in a half circle in a dark, forestlike clearing lit by torches. Each character held a tall staff with a shrunken head at the top. A procession of men shuffled onscreen—feet dragging, eyes straight ahead in a daze—carrying a woman tied to a plank by chains and wearing a collar of thorns. The camera zoomed in on her eyes, fixed in a trancelike stare. Cheesy organ music swelled from the speakers.

  The procession halted center screen. The black-robed half-circle parted for a bald, horned, muscular actor in a loincloth with his body painted dark red. He raised his arms and wagged his long tongue at the camera. Proceeding with dramatic, overacted strides to the side of the plank, he said to the woman, “I take you for my bride to live forever in the bowels of Hades.”

  She lifted her face toward him and waggled her tongue.

  The four of us broke out in laughter.

  “Seriously?” I said, wincing, “A million dollars? This is beyond bad.”

  “I am everywhere, in every shape,” the onscreen devil said to the faceless robed figures surrounding him in a circle. “I am your lover, your nightmare, your demon, your sins, and your savior.”

  “Why is the devil always a man?” Robin said.

  “Not always,” Nick said. “She-devils are scattered throughout history. The most famous is the legend of Lilith, Adam’s first wife, a character from Jewish mythology. Lilith appears in several forms with different names as a seductive spirit over many cultures dating back to late Antiquity. She—”

  “Fascinating,” Dave said. “Save the rest for the classroom. Here comes the scene.”

  The hooded figures onscreen circled the devil, chanting, “Hail, Satan.”

  The devil figure turned, sweeping his curled tail and bare backside toward the camera. He reached for a lit torch, bent over the woman, and drew a flaming inverted pentagram on her stomach.

  “The pentagram.” I squeezed Nick’s shoulder. “Billy used the inverted pentagram.”

  “He copied most of the scenes from Häxan, a 1922 Swedish film about medieval sorcery. The original version used an eight-pointed star instead of a pentagram,” Nick said.

  “Liz is right,” Robin said. “This proves Billy knew the pentagram—what if he killed Laycee?”

  “Why?” Dave said. “For offending him at a party?”

  “After seeing this film, I doubt if Billy has the ability to be offended,” Nick said.

  “Maybe Laycee saw the video and gave him a review,” Dave said, laughing.

  “Yuk it up, kids,” I said. “I’ll think of you while I’m at the police station to—” The camera panned in close on the devil’s face. “Nick, pause the screen. Quick.”

  The face froze on the monitor. The actor’s shaved head was painted red with pointed black eyebrows drawn in—but close up, the small eyes and thin mouth were unmistakable.

  “That’s Kyle Stanger. I’m sure of it.”

  Nick leaned forward and squinted. “You might be right.”

  “I know I’m right. Can you fast-forward to the credits?” I said.

  “There are no credits,” Robin said. “The project got canned before it went to post.”

  “You didn’t recognize Stanger the first time we watched this?” Dave said to Nick.

  “I only saw him once before, at the game. He had a full head of hair and wasn’t in red face paint,” Nick said. “And he didn’t have horns.”

  “I’m sure it’s him,” I said. “Billy told me Kyle took acting classes.”

  “After this was shot, I assume.” Robin laughed. “If I were Kyle, I wouldn’t put this disaster on an audition reel.”

  Tidbits of information spun through my mind. Kyle’s veiled resentment of Jarret. Kyle’s relationship with Laycee. Kyle’s absence from the gym on the morning of the murder.

  “Kyle has Jarret’s garage door code. He was familiar with the symbol. He left Laycee, his date, at Fifth Base with Jarret the night before the murder.” I turned to Dave. “What if Kyle was angrier at Laycee and Jarret for staying together that night than he let on? Would jealousy, coupled with his knowledge of the symbol, make him a suspect?”

  “Depends on the story Stanger gave Carla about that night,” Dave said. “Carla should see this clip. Stanger will be in the fingerprint database from his drug arrest. The forensics from the crime scene should be in by now. The killer could have worn gloves but, yeah, Stanger’s knowledge of even part of the symbol, especially the scene of him drawing the pentagram on the body, makes me suspicious.”

  “What’s on the rest of this footage?” I said.

  “We watched all of it before you got here. Nightmare sequences, ghosts, and witches stirring pots.” Nick ejected the DVD, gave it to me, and shut off his computer. “You saw the only scene that caught our attention—the devil drawing the pentagram on the woman’s body.”

  I dropped the disc in my purse and then perched on a stool next to Robin and Dave at the kitchen counter. Nick pulled beers out of the refrigerator and gave us each a bottle.

  “The fascination with the devil has gone on for centuries,” he said, settling next to me. “Religions and belief systems on every continent conjured a dark god or spirit who caused evil and catastrophic destruction.”

  “Blame your troubles on the outside
opposing and malevolent entity,” I said. “Before contemporary psychology and the concept of the subconscious, some scientists and philosophers ascribed undisciplined emotions like anger, greed, or jealousy to possession by the devil.”

  “Believe me, some lawyers still do that. It’s called the insanity defense,” Dave said.

  “Belief in the devil spread so widely that by the Middle Ages, the myth transformed into fact. He or she,” Nick said with a nod to Robin, “became real. Hell was positioned at the earth’s core, devils stuffed the damned into pots, and sinners were thrown in the fire.”

  “And don’t forget the female healers they labeled witches,” Robin said.

  “Very true,” Nick said. “Women were accused of signing pacts with the devil. Thousands were burned at the stake—young and pretty, old and haggard—their appearance didn’t matter. Often women were accused of witchcraft as an excuse to take away their property. Diseases were labeled curses. Stories spread about witches dancing naked with the devil and preparing food made from corpses in the gallows, marinated in wine casks. Women’s groups were labeled witches’ councils.”

  I put down my beer. “What did you say?”

  “Food was made from corpses in—”

  “No, the women’s groups and witches’ councils.” I covered my face, shaking my head. “I can’t believe I forgot about this. Laycee and I had a hairdresser in Atlanta who called herself a witch. Laycee went to a witches’ council meeting with her and came home with a book of witchcraft spells.”

  “And?” Dave said. “The hairdresser followed her to Jarret’s house in L.A. and killed her?”

  “No. I get it,” Robin said. “If Laycee kept the book in their house, Forrest could have seen an inverted pentagram. When he caught her at Jarret’s, he smeared the sign on her back to curse her.”

  “We’ve established that everyone on the planet except the three of you has seen a version of the inverted pentagram somewhere,” Nick said. “However, only Laycee’s killer understands the significance of the five. Schelz related it to vengeance.”

  “What’s the standard interpretation?” Dave said.