Grave Mistake

by Christine Pope

  Her silence stretched on for a minute, and then another. I held myself still, knowing I didn’t dare interrupt as she was trying to focus, even while I wished I could see something of what she was seeing as she sat there on the etheric plane and reached out with senses no earthly being possessed.

  “Athene is still nearby,” she said at length. “I can feel her vibrations not too far from you.”

  A relieved breath slipped past my lips. That was something. At least it seemed as if my visions of her escaping town in an Uber and flying back to Los Angeles had been nothing more than worst-case fears.

  “Where is she?”

  “I can’t say exactly.” Once again, her brows knotted together. “I know it’s someplace close, and yet I can’t see anything clearly. It’s as if a mist surrounds her, hiding her from my sight.”

  That sounded to me as if Athene had cast some sort of spell to hide herself from any pursuers. I suppose that made sense, especially if she hadn’t yet been able to come up with a means of getting herself physically away from Globe.

  But why would she do such a thing in the first place? Didn’t she know how guilty that made her look?

  Maybe it’s because she is guilty, I thought. She could have gone to ground to get herself some breathing room. Maybe she realized this morning that her medallion was missing, and it was only a matter of time before Calvin or his deputies found it and realized it was a piece of evidence that couldn’t be ignored.

  That all sounded sensible enough, and yet I still couldn’t shake the feeling I’d missed something vitally important.

  “How close is she?” I asked next, knowing I sounded a bit too desperate. “Like, right down the street? The other side of town? Out at the casino/hotel?”

  My grandmother only smiled. “I’m not a GPS device, Selena. I can tell she’s around somewhere not too far away, but that’s the only thing I can sense. You’ll have to do the rest of the work yourself.”

  Because I already had plenty of experience with the limitations of otherworldly help, I wasn’t too upset by her comment. And the situation could have been much worse. I could have been trying to track down Athene in my old neighborhood back in West L.A., an area full of apartment buildings and duplexes and hotels, rather than quiet little Globe.

  “Well, thanks, Grandma,” I said. “I’ll see what I can find out.”

  Her head tilted slightly. “How’s the love life?”

  “The same,” I replied. Which I supposed was mostly the truth. I’d met someone I found interesting, but I couldn’t tell whether he thought I was equally interesting. We’d certainly not gone on anything remotely resembling a date, unless you counted getting dunked in the river.

  Anyway, I didn’t plan to tell my grandmother any of that, partly because there wasn’t much to tell, and partly because I didn’t want to send the conversation along a route where she’d be likely to ask me a lot of questions. Also, it was entirely possible she knew all about Calvin if she’d been taking a peek at my life to see what I was up to. No point in wasting any more time.

  A little twinkle in her blue eyes told me she knew I was lying, or at least omitting parts of the truth. But she only said, “Ah, well, maybe it will pick up now that you’re out of Los Angeles. The energy there was never very good for you.”

  Now you tell me, I thought, but I let it go. Better to focus on the present, rather than a past that couldn’t be changed.

  “We’ll see,” I said lightly. “Thanks, Grandma Ellen.”

  “That’s what I’m here for.”

  She disappeared from the crystal ball, and I reached for the piece of dark green silk I used to cover it when it wasn’t in use.

  Afterward, I headed back out to the living room and peeked through the blinds on one of the front windows. As usual, there wasn’t much to see; downtown Globe wasn’t a hotbed of activity on the best of days, and on Sunday afternoon, when almost everything except the movie theater and a couple of restaurants were closed, it might as well have been a ghost town.

  Hmm.

  Grandma Ellen had said she didn’t sense Lucien on her plane, which might or might not have meant much. Evolved spirits such as hers could see a lot, but they weren’t omniscient.

  Still, I couldn’t help being a bit troubled. When a life was violently cut short the way his was, that spirit could remain on the earthly plane, haunting the place wherever they’d met their end.

  Was that what I’d felt when I’d walked along the bank of the San Ramon River? Had it been Lucien Dumond’s ghost haunting the isolated spot? When I sensed those ripples of fear and pain, I’d thought they were only psychic echoes from the moment when he’d died…but maybe it had been something much worse.

  A shiver inched its way down my spine, although I told myself ghosts were nothing to fear. Encountering one could be disconcerting, but a ghost couldn’t actually hurt you.

  Supposedly.

  I put that thought aside for the moment, figuring I could revisit it once I’d gotten the whole Athene problem worked out. If she was still in the area, there weren’t many places she could have gone to ground. Globe had exactly three hotels — a Best Western and a Holiday Inn Express near the intersection of Highway 70 and Highway 60, and a shabby little motel called the Dew Drop Inn out on the western edge of town. None of them seemed like the sort of place where she would hole up, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. It shouldn’t take me too long to call each hotel and —

  And nothing. I wasn’t a cop or even a private investigator; it wasn’t as though I could call any of the hotels in question and ask whether a woman matching Athene Kappas’ description had checked in there earlier in the day.

  Also, I guessed that Calvin would have checked both those places just as soon as he realized his other suspect had bolted. While I didn’t expect him to keep me abreast of every development in the case, I had a feeling he would have told me he’d located Athene.

  So…she had to have gone someplace else. Another Airbnb or some kind of vacation rental? That seemed like the likeliest explanation, but again, I figured Calvin must have checked any place like that as well. And it wasn’t as if Athene knew anyone in Globe; she couldn’t have headed over to a friend’s house.

  Frowning, I turned away from the window. I didn’t want to bother Josie when I knew she had a house pre-inspection to manage — it might have been Sunday, but that didn’t matter to Josie Woodrow — but on the other hand, she seemed like the best person to ask whether she knew of anyone who was listing vacation rentals on Craigslist or something, the kind of place Calvin might not think immediately to check.

  For some reason, Hazel’s face flashed into my mind. No, she hadn’t lived in Globe her entire life like Josie, but she’d been there for more than seven years and pretty much knew everyone as well. And if I called her, then I wouldn’t have to bug Josie while she was trying to work.

  I got my phone from my purse and pushed the “call” button next to Hazel’s name on my contacts list. It rang a couple of times, and I wondered if she was going to pick up. After all, the day was a beautiful one, and I thought it was entirely possible she’d decided to go hiking, maybe bring along a palette for some plein air painting. She had several pieces in the town’s one and only art gallery, and I’d been eyeing her sunset vision of the San Ramon river, all gold-brushed cottonwoods and warm, lovely tones. It would look gorgeous in my living room.

  But then her voice came through my iPhone’s speaker. “Hi, Selena. What’s up?”

  She sounded almost tense, which was very unlike Hazel. Small-town life suited her, and she tended to be relaxed and easygoing no matter what the situation. My spider-sense tingled a little, but I only said, “Hi, Hazel. This is going to sound like a weird question, but do you know of anyone in town who’s recently started renting out their house as an Airbnb or other kind of vacation rental, someone Calvin might not know about? It’s just that my friend Athene has gone missing, and — ”

  A long pause. Then Hazel said, �
��She told me you’d probably figure it out.”

  “‘She’?” I repeated, not sure what she’d meant by that remark.

  “Athene Kappas,” Hazel said. “She’s here.”

  11

  Questions and Answers

  Athene definitely didn’t look like her normal in-command self. Her long, near-black hair had been pulled back into a barrette rather than flowing down her back the way she usually wore it, and her face was bare of makeup. Shadows darkened the skin under her eyes.

  “I put my second bedroom on Craigslist just a day ago,” Hazel said as she handed me a glass of iced tea and poured more for Athene. Judging by the way Athene’s hand shook as she held out the glass, I had a feeling she really didn’t need any more caffeine.

  Not that I was going to say anything. If anyone had earned the right to be jittery, it was Athene Kappas.

  “Things have been a little tight lately,” Hazel went on, “so I figured I might as well give it a try. I was looking for more of a long-term renter, but — ”

  “But I told her I’d pay her for a month’s worth of renting the room,” Athene cut in. “I needed a place to think.”

  “What happened?” I asked. She didn’t look like someone who’d just committed a violent murder, but appearances weren’t everything.

  But while her aura spiked with the yellow and pale orange of worry, I didn’t see any gray and black guilty edges to it. While it wasn’t too hard to manage your expressions, it was very difficult to change your aura.

  She rubbed her hand over the fabric of the long black skirt she wore. I didn’t think I’d ever seen Athene wear anything but black.

  “Violet showed up,” she said, her full mouth compressing to a flat line.

  I racked my brains, trying to remember who Violet was. Lucien had so many groupies hanging around, it was hard to keep track of them all. I had a vague recollection of a slight girl with pale blonde hair, but I couldn’t recall for sure if the girl in my memory was Violet or another one of Lucien’s hangers-on.

  Apparently seeing my mystification, Athene gave me a grim smile. “Violet Clarke. One of Lucien’s little fans…and just barely legal. She’s obsessed with him. He told her where he was going, the idiot, and she followed us here.”

  Hazel had been watching our exchange, expression one of worry…and a little confusion. “Where is Violet now?”

  “Who knows?” Athene said with a lift of her shoulders. “She and Lucien had their little ritual on Friday night, and then they took off together.”

  Ritual. I recalled what Josie had said about the loud, tribal music and the scent of incense that had permeated the place. I’d thought Athene and Lucien were practicing sex magic, but it sounded as if it must have been Violet instead.

  Who knows what my face did as I reacted to that disturbing mental image, but Athene must have picked up on it, because she gave me a little smirk before drinking some more of her iced tea.

  “No, it wasn’t me,” she said. “Lucien and I were always all business. I went into my bedroom — that was part of the reason why we rented that particular Airbnb…it had two bedrooms…and left them to their business. When they were done, Lucien came and knocked on my door and told me they were headed out. They’d gotten it into their heads that they wanted to perform another ritual out in the woods, next to the river, to pick up some of its energy.” Another swallow of tea, and she finished, “That was the last time I ever saw him.”

  “Why didn’t you tell Calvin that?” I asked. True, the girl in question didn’t seem like anyone who would be capable of violent murder, but I knew Calvin would still want to talk to her. “You probably wouldn’t be a suspect anymore. I mean, if Violet and Lucien were alone together by the river….” The words trailed off, but I knew she must have gotten my meaning.

  She shook her head. “I suppose I wanted to protect her. She’s so young, and she’s gotten herself caught up in something she really doesn’t understand.”

  “But if she’s guilty — ” Hazel began.

  “I can’t believe that,” Athene said, before adding with a bitter little smile, “Not because I believe in the fundamental goodness of human nature or anything so simple, but because Violet simply isn’t strong enough to have overcome a man like Lucien. A girl who’s barely five foot three and maybe weighs a hundred pounds wringing wet would be no match for a man in the prime of life.”

  On the surface, maybe not. But if Violet had been driven into a jealous rage because Lucien had come to Globe to fetch me….

  That scenario didn’t seem terribly plausible. For one thing, they’d participated in ritual sex that very night, so Violet should have been able to tell Lucien still desired her. Or had she flown into a passion after realizing he’d only used her sexual energy to work his magic, and he didn’t care anything about her?

  Since I didn’t know the girl, I had a hard time answering either of those questions.

  “And she wasn’t all that strong magically, either,” Athene said. “The simplest of Lucien’s spells could have snapped her in two, if that had been his intention.”

  “‘Magically’?” Hazel repeated, her expression now torn between amusement and skepticism. “I mean, I know you’re a witch, Selena, but — ”

  “Yes, magic,” Athene said, her tone now brisk, as if she was glad of the chance to school her temporary landlady. “I’m not saying you need to believe in it, because it’s real whether you believe in it or not, but we’re all practitioners. Some stronger than others” — she gave me the faintest of nods, as if acknowledging that I wasn’t exactly a hack — “but we all have access to it, in one degree or another. Violet has just begun her training, and while she might have some skill in time, she is certainly no match for Lucien.”

  “Have you seen her?” I asked.

  “No. She never came back to the Airbnb. That is, she never came inside the house. Her car was gone, so I assume she must have come back to get it, but I never saw her. When I woke up the next morning, I was a little surprised to see neither of them were there, although I thought they must have stayed out all night.” Something that wasn’t quite a sigh escaped her pale lips. “It wouldn’t have been the first time.”

  I probably didn’t want to know what had kept Lucien out all those other nights. “What kind of car was she driving?”

  “A red BMW convertible.” Another of those humorless smiles. “Her parents have money.”

  Of course they did. Lucien just loved to lure rich acolytes to him so he could charge them for classes and seminars and retreats, books and amulets and whatever else he could use to get his hands on their money. I found the whole thing distasteful — practice of the craft should never be tied to how much cash you have on hand — but then again, they were all individuals with free will. They could have seen how morally bankrupt his practices were and moved on to something more personally and karmicly rewarding.

  “Well, a red BMW should stand out in Globe,” Hazel said.

  I couldn’t argue with her remark, not when my own much more modest metallic blue Beetle had gotten its share of lifted eyebrows as I drove around town. “That’s for sure. I think we’d better let Calvin know to keep an eye out for it — if Violet is even still in the area.”

  My comment made Athene shoot me a knowing glance, as if she’d already guessed why I was on a first-name basis with the chief of the San Ramon tribal police department. “Probably should give him a description, too — Violet is nineteen, long blonde hair, blue eyes, short and slender. She was wearing a black dress the last time I saw her, but she might have changed since then.”

  Nineteen. I wanted to shudder at the thought of a girl so young hooking up with someone who was literally twice her age — actually a bit more, come to think of it. And I also wondered what the hell her parents were thinking, to let her run in that kind of company.

  But, as Athene had said, Violet was a legal adult. I had a feeling her parents didn’t pay nearly as much attention to her as they probably
should, and that was why she’d gotten mixed up with Lucien and GLANG in the first place.

  “And let Chief Lewis know, too,” Hazel put in. “I know Calvin’s working the case because the murder happened on tribal land, but there’s probably a greater chance Violet’s somewhere in Globe — if she’s still around at all.”

  Right. I was so focused on Calvin Standingbear, I tended to forget that Globe had its own chief of police, Henry Lewis. Our paths had only crossed once, and he seemed just about the opposite of Calvin, a buzz-cut ex-Marine who clearly had little use for a woman who’d moved into his town and brought her crazy L.A. woo-woo with her.

  “I guess so,” I said, the lack of enthusiasm in my tone so obvious, Hazel actually chuckled.

  “Yeah, I know. And actually, if you tell Calvin, then he’ll probably get in contact with Chief Lewis, and then you don’t have to worry about talking to him.”

  That sounded like a much better plan. Even if Violet wasn’t a suspect — and I still thought she might be, no matter what Athene had to say on the matter — she was probably the last person who’d seen Lucien Dumond alive, and therefore she’d have information to provide that no one else would.

  “Don’t tell him you found me,” Athene said next, her tone almost pleading.

  “He’s going to find out sooner or later,” I told her. “You’re innocent, so you don’t have anything to worry about.”

  The look she gave me after I delivered that remark was almost pitying, as if she couldn’t believe anyone could live almost three decades on this planet and still be so naïve. And all right, I had to admit that I generally tried to believe the best about people until they proved me horribly wrong, but still, I could tell Athene hadn’t killed Lucien, and so it seemed plausible enough to think that Calvin Standingbear would see that truth as well.