“Besides,” I hurried on, “once he hears about Violet, he’s going to want to talk to her, and you’ll be off the hook for a bit.”
“That might be true,” Athene said. “But I can’t cool my heels here indefinitely. With Lucien gone” — she stopped there and pulled in a breath, a suspicious glint entering her dark eyes — “there’s a lot that needs to be done. I was his business partner, so it falls to me to handle the practical side of things. I need to be cleared of suspicion so I can manage the execution of his estate, assure everyone in GLANG that the organization will continue, and take care of any other legal or practical matters that need to be addressed.”
Her tone had grown crisper during that speech, as if thinking about all the things that had to be done had helped to smooth some of the rough edges of her grief. Actually, since Athene was such a pragmatic, take-charge sort of person, I had a feeling that’s exactly what was going on. I couldn’t even blame her; it always helped to have something to distract you from your grief.
“All the more reason to let Calvin know about Violet,” I said. “And honestly, he can’t be that angry about you relocating from the Airbnb to here. Like you said, you needed some space to think, but it’s not as if you left Globe. You were still doing what he told you to do.”
An unwilling smile pulled at her mouth. “Have you always been this good at rationalization?”
“Libra ascendant,” I told her cheerfully. “I excel at it.”
And I pulled out my phone.
When he appeared at Hazel’s house, Calvin didn’t look too thrilled that I’d managed to locate his runaway murder suspect. His dark eyes met mine and held for a moment, as if telling me that we’d discuss this later.
Which was fine by me, if it meant we’d have a chance to be alone together and talk.
But after that brief, unspoken exchange, he was all business. He declined Hazel’s offer of a glass of iced tea and took a seat in the living room’s only unoccupied chair, a small hard-backed thing that creaked uncomfortably under his weight, while his lanky frame made it look as though he was sitting in a child’s chair rather than one made for normal-sized human beings.
“Do you have a license plate number for Ms. Clarke’s car?” he asked after Athene had given him a description of the girl and a brief timeline of the events of the night in question.
“No. I know it was one of those retro-looking black and gold ones…some kind of vanity thing, I think.” She tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, and the garnets in the multiple ear studs she wore glittered in the sunlight coming through the window.
He smiled — the sort of friendly, encouraging smile that would have made my knees a little weak but didn’t seem to have much effect on her. “That’s helpful. Now, what time did Violet show up?”
“A little after nine-thirty, I think. I know it couldn’t have been much earlier than that, because Lucien had already gotten back from speaking to Selena.”
At those words, Calvin’s gaze flickered back toward me for just a moment. He didn’t comment, though, only said, “Was Lucien angry that she’d followed him to Globe?”
“A little, I think.” She shrugged. “But then Violet begged him not to be upset with her and said that she’d only come here because she didn’t want to be away from him. After that, he seemed to accept the situation. He told her she could actually help him out, because he needed her assistance with a ritual.”
“What kind of ritual?”
For the first time, a faint flush appeared on Athene’s high cheekbones. “A protection ritual. He wanted it in place before he slept.”
I wondered why Lucien would have needed a protection ritual in a place as sleepy and out of the way as Globe. Just a precaution, or was I missing a piece of the puzzle?
“Could you have helped with this ritual?”
Her eyes wouldn’t meet his. “Lucien liked to practice sex magic. He said it powered his spells better than anything else. We didn’t have that kind of a relationship.”
“Ah.” Calvin didn’t have the kind of complexion that would easily reveal a blush, but I had a feeling he was embarrassed by the direction the conversation had taken. “So, he performed this ritual with Violet.”
“Yes.”
“And they left after that.”
“Yes.”
“What time?”
“A little before midnight, I think.”
He nodded and wrote a few more notes on the pad he’d brought with him. When he was done, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the medallion he’d fished out of the river earlier that morning. Since it was still encased in a baggie, I had to assume the forensics lab hadn’t inspected it yet. Made sense; the place probably wasn’t even open on Sundays.
“Do you recognize this?”
Her eyes had widened as soon as he brought it out, which was probably the only confirmation he needed. But Athene nodded and said, “Yes, it’s a GLANG medallion.”
“Yours?”
She shook her head. “I have one, but I don’t wear it much. Mine is still back at my house in Woodland Hills.”
I didn’t know why her answer surprised me. She was always at Lucien’s side, and so I’d just assumed she must also live at his house in Encino.
So much for my assumptions.
“Did Violet have a medallion like this?”
“Yes,” Athene replied. “I know Lucien gave her one a couple of months ago. His way of telling her that she was one of his favorites.”
Would Lucien have expected me to wear one of those things if I’d given in to him? Probably; I got the feeling he used them as a sort of brand, which was probably part of the reason why Athene didn’t wear hers very much. I didn’t have any more time to spend on speculation, though, because Calvin went on, “Do you know if she was wearing it when she came to Globe?”
“I — ” Athene broke off there, frowning slightly. “I don’t remember. It was fairly dark in the house — Lucien doesn’t — didn’t — like to have a lot of lights on. She probably did, though. Once Lucien gave it to her, she always wore the thing.”
Calvin made a few more notes. When he was done, he looked back up at Athene. “This evidence is all pretty circumstantial, but I want to ask you anyway. Do you think Violet Clarke murdered Lucien Dumond?”
“No.”
Only that one word, but her tone was pretty emphatic. Hazel gave me a quick sideways glance, greenish eyes questioning, and I allowed myself the barest lift of my shoulders. I’d already heard basically the same thing from Athene, but I wondered why Calvin had asked the question. Was he trying to come up with excuses why there was no reason to waste time tracking down Violet when it was obvious she couldn’t be the killer?
“Did Lucien have any enemies?”
That question elicited a bitter little chuckle. “Of course he did. All powerful men do. But whether any of them were resourceful enough or strong enough to overpower him? I doubt it.” She leaned forward and set down the glass of iced tea she’d been holding the entire time. “That’s the problem, Chief Standingbear. I can think of a whole lot of people who would have liked to see Lucien dead, but I can’t see how any of them could have managed it. Especially alone and hundreds of miles away from their base of operations.”
“But Lucien wasn’t exactly operating out of his own backyard.”
Athene seemed to consider Calvin’s statement for a moment, then shrugged. “No, but he had Violet help him cast a protection spell. That on its own would have been enough to make sure no harm came to him.”
Calvin had been impassive through their exchange, expression barely budging, but his mouth twitched then, just the slightest bit. And apparently, Athene had been looking for some sign of disbelief, because she leaned against the back of the sofa, grim satisfaction in her eyes.
“I know you think this all sounds crazy, but it’s the truth. Lucien’s spells worked just fine. How do you think he’s managed to keep himself safe all these years?”
“
He didn’t keep himself safe Friday night.”
Not even a flicker in her heavy-lidded dark eyes. “No, and I think we all want to know the reason why. Since I wasn’t there, I can’t say for sure.” She crossed her arms and stared back at him. “I’ve told you everything I know. Are you still going to require me to stay in this backwater of yours, or can I go back to L.A.? I have a lot of arrangements to make. I also need to know when Lucien’s body will be released.”
“You’ll have to ask the medical examiner about that,” Calvin replied, apparently unperturbed by her “backwater” comment. “I’ll give you the number — they’ll be open tomorrow morning at eight o’clock.”
He flipped over the piece of paper he’d been writing on, then scribbled something on the one beneath it and tore it off. Athene took it from him, mouth tight.
“But sure, you can go back to California,” he went on. “Unless, of course, some new evidence presents itself.”
Her expression didn’t change. “Good. I’ll get an airport shuttle set up…unless you found Lucien’s car so I can drive it back.”
“Haven’t found the vehicle yet,” Calvin said. “But even if we had, I couldn’t release it to you unless you were on the title.”
This response seemed to annoy her, although I couldn’t tell whether she was irritated more by the fact that the Mercedes was still missing or that she wouldn’t have been able to drive it even if it wasn’t still MIA.
However, she only replied, “Good to know. Is there anything else?”
Her tone and manner were so imperious, she sounded like a queen dismissing a lackey. Someone else might have taken offense, but Calvin just said, “No, ma’am. I think that’s all for now. I’ll be in touch if anything else comes up.”
He rose from his chair, nodded at Hazel, and then sent another of those sideways glances at me. A little tingle of anticipation ran down my spine.
Calvin might not have spoken out loud, but that look clearly said, I’m not done with you yet.
12
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
My witchy sixth sense told me I needed to get a real dinner together, so after I said goodbye to Hazel and Athene, I headed over to Walmart and got a whole chicken and some fresh veggies, along with what looked like a nice bottle of pinot noir from Washington State. I already had rice on hand, and I figured I’d make a pilaf from the recipe my mother had passed down from my Grandma Ellen.
Some tidying up — and a quick check of my Tarot, the two of cups telling me that yes, playing Suzy Homemaker had been the right call — and a little after six o’clock, the buzzer for the back entrance to the shop sounded.
Perfect.
I hurried downstairs and opened the door. Calvin Standingbear stood outside, looking diffident.
“Right on time,” I told him.
“What?”
“Come on in.”
Expression even more nonplussed, he came into the little space that served as the back entrance’s foyer. “We need to talk,” he said.
“I know,” I replied. “Come upstairs. Dinner is almost ready.”
“Dinner?”
“You’re hungry, aren’t you?”
“Well — ”
“Exactly.”
Without waiting for a reply, I made my way up the stairs. The sound of his quiet, heavy tread told me he’d decided to follow without argument.
When we went inside, the warm aromas of roasting chicken and rice pilaf with almonds greeted us.
“You weren’t joking, were you?” Calvin said.
“I never joke about food.” Which was only the truth. I didn’t know if I could classify myself as a full-on kitchen witch, but I liked to cook and to bake. The soothing routines of following recipes and adding my own personal touches really weren’t all that different from performing a ritual or crafting a spell jar, when you got right down to it.
I went into the kitchen and sneaked a peek at the rice. It looked ready to go, fluffy and luscious, and so I turned off the gas and left it to sit with the lid in place. Calvin glanced past me to the table, already set and with the bottle of wine open and airing.
“Please tell me you’re not still on duty,” I said, noting where his gaze had landed. “I mean, you can’t be on duty all the time, can you?”
“Technically, I’m off duty,” he allowed. “But we have a small department, so I’m still on call if something important comes up.”
“Well, a glass of wine won’t kill you.”
He made an amused sound, not quite a snort, but to my relief, he didn’t argue with me. Instead, he asked, “Can I help with anything?”
“We’re about ready to go,” I replied. “You could get the chicken out of the oven for me, though. The pot holders are in that drawer.”
I pointed, and he got out a pair of oven mitts decorated with bees and flowers. They looked so incongruous against his muscular forearms that I wanted to laugh. Somehow, though, I held it together while he knelt down and extricated the roasting pan and the golden-brown bird it held.
“You can set it down on the stovetop,” I said, and he put the pan in place on the section of stove not occupied by the pot of pilaf. “And then carve once it’s time to eat, because I’m actually terrible at that.”
He grinned at my confession, and I sent him over to sit down at the dining table so I could get everything dished up. Within a few minutes, we were both seated and ready to go, candles flickering at the center of the table and from the narrow buffet I used as a sideboard. As I was setting everything up, I’d thought about putting on some soft music to play in the background but had decided against it. I was probably already pushing things enough with the wine.
He’d already poured some pinot noir for both of us, so there wasn’t much to do except raise our glasses and clink them against one another.
“You got all this from a psychic flash?” Calvin asked after he took a sip.
“Well, it wasn’t all a psychic flash,” I replied, then sipped some of my wine. Not bad. I didn’t really care for white wine with dinner, which was why I’d decided on the pinot noir instead of chardonnay or something. “That stink-eye you were giving me at Hazel’s house told me you wanted to talk, so I figured we might as well have our discussion over food.”
“It wasn’t a stink-eye,” he objected, and I tilted my head at him.
“I was on the receiving end of it,” I said. “It was totally a stink-eye.”
He just shook his head and concentrated for a moment on carving the chicken and laying a lush slice of breast on my plate. Next, he did the same for himself, then cut a small piece off one end. Before he popped it in his mouth, he said, “All right, possibly I was slightly irked that you’d interfered with the investigation again when I expressly told you not to.”
I paused. Archie had made himself scarce during my dinner preparations, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t lurking down the hall, listening to everything Calvin and I said. Actually, for a man in cat form, Archie didn’t show much interest in human food. I asked him about it once, and he’d given the cat equivalent of a shrug and told me he didn’t want to torture himself with “real” food when there was so little chance of him becoming a human being again any time soon.
Those words had sent a spurt of guilt through me — I knew I hadn’t devoted as much time to solving his problem as I probably should have — but I’d only shrugged and said that made some sense, and left it there.
But since Calvin was staring at me, fork in one hand, obviously waiting for me to make some sort of a response, I knew I had to say something.
“Well, I probably wouldn’t have done anything, except Josie told me Athene had checked out of her Airbnb — one of Josie’s friends owns it — and because I was worried that something might happen to her, I tried checking around. It was just coincidence that she’d ended up renting a room from Hazel. I didn’t even know she was thinking about doing that.”
As I spoke, though, I remembered Hazel making an of
f-hand comment about investigating alternative ways of earning some cash, since the money her art brought in tended to be sort of hit or miss. The commission to paint the ceiling of my store had brought in a nice chunk for her, but jobs like that didn’t come along all the time, and although her paintings were in galleries all over Arizona, again, those sales weren’t what you could call steady income.
But she’d never mentioned renting out her spare room, and so I figured I was telling the truth when I said I had no idea about those plans.
“Hmm,” was all Calvin said, which could have meant anything. Or maybe that was his way of letting me know he still wasn’t happy about what I’d done, but he also wasn’t going to do anything about it.
“Still no sign of Lucien’s missing car?” I asked, and he shook his head. Now his expression was resigned, as if he knew he couldn’t keep me from talking about the case no matter what he did.
“None,” he replied. He lifted his glass of pinot and took a sip. I waited, trying to seem casual, when in reality, I found myself almost mesmerized by the movement of his throat as he swallowed, the faint kiss of wine on his sculpted lips. The guy was seriously distracting. “It’s strange, just because a car like that isn’t exactly common around here. Also, Mercedes are some of the most difficult cars to break into. It’s almost as though whoever took it had their own key fob.”
“Couldn’t someone, I don’t know, have hacked the car’s computer?” I seemed to remember reading something like that a while back, although I had to admit that Globe didn’t seem like a hotbed of computer-hacking car thieves.
“I suppose it’s possible, but it’s not very likely.” Calvin set down his wine glass. “We’ll figure it out eventually.”
“What about Violet?”
His shoulders lifted. No uniform this time, only a dark button-up shirt, faded jeans, and scuffed black cowboy boots. I’d already gotten used to the cowboy boots and turquoise jewelry that many of the town’s denizens tended to sport, but on him, the boots didn’t look silly but downright sexy.
Grave Mistake Page 13
