Jo folded her hands in her lap and looked down at them. She twisted the amethyst ring around her finger. Best to face the music. “I think Maja is dead.”
She wasn’t sure who was responsible for the cursing or the sharp intakes of breath, but Gregor spoke first. “How can you possibly believe that?”
Jo looked up. His face was not amused. “Because…”
Vesna sat on Jo’s other side and covered Jo’s cold hands with her warm one. “Jo’s had a rough week. Since I sprung this on her, maybe I should start.”
Jo listened intently as Vesna recounted Jo’s trip to the police station and her efforts to find Maja. She told them about Maja leaving to quit her other job and that they hadn’t heard anything from her since.
Faron was shaking his head. “You aren’t joking?”
“No.” Jo and Vesna said it in stereo.
Gregor hadn’t said anything. He was just staring at the two of them. Frédéric got up to get the tea and came back with cups and a pot of English builders tea strong enough to stand a spoon in. The warm cup in her hands felt like the only real thing in the room.
“I know it sounds crazy. But I think we need to prepare ourselves for the worst.” Jo looked at the men, trying to will them to believe her even though the evidence she could give them was flimsy at best.
Gregor leaned in closer to her. “I just…I don’t want to believe what you’ve said is true. But I know you too well to think you’re overreacting.”
Jo nodded.
Frédéric coughed, “What do we do now?”
Faron started to speak but was interrupted by a heavy knock on the front door. Investigator Marta Klančnik and a uniformed officer were standing in the courtyard. Vesna went to the door and let them in.
Marta looked over Vesna’s shoulder to the seated group. “Family meeting?”
“Something like that.” Vesna gestured for them both to come in.
“You should probably sit back down. I’m afraid I’m not here with good news.” Marta and the officer followed Vesna back to the table. When Vesna had taken her seat, Marta let out a long breath. “I am here to inform you that Maja Demšar’s body was found this morning in the Ljubljana river.”
They all looked at each other and back to Marta.
Marta surveyed their faces. “You don’t seem surprised by this news.”
“I told you I had a bad feeling. I knew she didn’t just take off.” Jo hoped she sounded appropriately respectful. What was the penalty for kicking an investigator in the shins?
“It seems you were correct.” Marta looked to Vesna and Frédéric. “I have some questions for the three of you.”
Vesna stood. “I should make a sign for the door.”
Jo and Frédéric nodded. Marta stared at Vesna, who took off her apron and draped it over her chair.
“We can’t open today. A member of our staff, our family, has died.”
Faron and Gregor spoke at the same time. Gregor asked, “Do you want me to stay?” and Faron asked, “What can I do?”
Jo squeezed Faron’s hand. “Yes, please stay, both of you. I don’t know what you can do but I’m glad you’re here.”
Marta started her interview with Frédéric. Vesna, Faron, and Jo went into the kitchen to wrap and refrigerate what Frédéric and Vesna had accomplished, hoping some could be saved for whenever they reopened. Gregor went to the office and closed the door to make a phone call.
“Why didn’t you say something sooner?” Faron had turned from the sink where he was washing knives and cutting boards.
“I didn’t want to be right. I was hoping she’d just show up.” Jo sighed. Maja had just shown up, but not as she would have liked.
“But you talked to Vesna about it…No offense, Vesna.”
“None taken.” Vesna body-bagged the egg salad sandwiches with some damp paper towels to keep them from drying out.
“Vesna’s not my kid whom I’m sworn to protect from all harm, or something like that.” She ruffled his hair in exactly the way she knew irritated him most.
He snorted at her and went back to washing dishes.
Frédéric appeared in the door to the kitchen. “Vesna, she’d like to speak with you next.”
Vesna handed him the double wrapped plate of sandwiches and nodded her head at the reach-in. “I’ll leave these with you.”
The three of them finished in the kitchen and then stood looking at each other. Jo wondered if they should stay there or go sit in the dining room.
Vesna came back quickly. “Jo, it’s all you.”
Jo took her apron off and hung it on the office door. She walked out to the table where Marta sat reading over her notes and tapping her pen on the table. The officer who’d come with her was outside talking on his cell phone.
Marta looked up as Jo approached the table. “I’m guessing you’d like me to apologize for not taking you more seriously at the station?”
“No. You were doing your job and I imagine a murder takes precedence over anything else.” Jo sat and leaned back in the wooden chair, her hands in her lap. She tried not to clench them. It didn’t matter if Marta believed her or not. Maja was already dead.
“It does. But now it looks like there are two murders.”
“What makes you believe there were two murders?” Jo tried to sound surprised.
“People generally don’t strangle themselves.”
“Do you know what happened?”
“I should be asking the questions here. When did you last see Miss Demšar?”
“I told you all this at the station.” Jo clenched her hands anyway.
“Tell me again.”
Jo recounted the last conversation she’d had with Maja the day she disappeared.
“Do you know if she did go straight to Spotlight?”
“Spotlight? Oh. I think so. She didn’t mention doing anything else.”
“Did you know that she worked for Tomaž Novak?”
“I knew he owned the bar where she worked.”
“You’ve made it pretty clear you don’t like him.” Marta looked at her notebook again while she waited for Jo to respond.
“I guess. He’s sleazy where women are concerned. And I don’t trust someone who treats people, anyone, not just women, with such disrespect.”
“Did you know he was sleeping with Helena Belak?” Marta looked her in the face now.
Jo sputtered. “No.”
“Really?”
“No. I had no idea. I mean I guess I’m surprised. Helena seemed to have better taste than that.”
Marta smirked. “And you wouldn’t want you and your son to be lumped in with someone you dislike so much?”
“That’s not exactly what I meant, but, yeah, I guess so.”
“Would you mind telling me again how you ‘knew’ something had happened to Miss Demšar?”
“I told you, I had a premonition, a really bad feeling. It just wasn’t like her to not show up for work. She seemed relieved to be quitting at the blue bar and excited about being here full time.”
“You went to her apartment to check on her.”
“I did. I’m kinda surprised her roommate remembered. She was wasted.”
“She did. She also told me that God told her Maja was dead.”
“Interesting.”
“Did you tell her that?” Marta’s expression was set at poker face: level master.
“No. Do I look like god? I asked her if she’d seen Maja. She said she wasn’t there, or that she wasn’t living there.”
“Wasn’t living there?”
“I don’t know. She was really high.”
“Did you have someone with you?”
“Yes, my friend Rok.”
“Did he speak to her?”
“Not really. She asked him
if he wanted to buy pot and he said no.”
“Where were you the night she disappeared?”
“Here until about ten, then upstairs in my apartment the rest of the night.” She didn’t see any reason to tell her she’d dragged Milo and Vesna through the rain to look for Maja. She doubted Vesna would have shared that either.
“Alone?” Marta arched her eyebrow when she asked.
“No. With Milo.”
“I guess you don’t spend many nights alone.”
In the interest of ending the interview before she succumbed to the desire to kick a member of law enforcement in the shins, Jo shrugged the comment off.
Marta closed her notebook and looked at her with an expression Jo couldn’t quite place. “Ms. Wiley, I know there is something you are not telling me.”
Jo didn’t say anything but she didn’t look away from Marta’s scrutiny.
“When I find out what it is, I can’t promise that it won’t be bad for you.”
“I can promise I have told you all that I can.” She was a bad liar but what she said wasn’t exactly untrue. She had told all she she could, without Marta thinking she’d lost her marbles.
“I don’t think I need to tell you that you shouldn’t leave Ljubljana.” Marta stood and gathered her jacket from the chair.
“Am I a suspect?” She couldn’t possibly think Jo had killed Helena. There had been too many witnesses at the museum. And what reason could she have for killing Maja? She’d gone to the police station to report Maja missing. Yet it was clear that Marta didn’t believe or trust her.
“Not yet.”
Jo stood.
Marta didn’t speak to her again. She walked out the door into the courtyard, startling the officer on the phone. She said something to him Jo couldn’t hear, and the two of them disappeared through the doorway to the street.
Jo sat at the table farthest from the door. Vesna had her going through old catering menus to see if there was anything they could throw away. It was mostly mindless but did require her to think about whether the items had been well-received and if they would make them again. She found the menu for the party they had catered where she met Helena. Helena had been playfully flirting with her. She had completely missed it, but Helena took her witty comebacks as flirting back and followed her into the small kitchen. She’d maneuvered Jo against a countertop and run her hand down her bare arm. She felt the electricity again in thinking about it.
Who else had been at that party? Faron had helped them out serving. Is that when Helena had started her collecting? Tomaž was also there with someone who wasn’t Katarina. Had that really only been August? Of course Helena and Tomaž knew each other. She seemed to know everyone and Tomaž made it his business to be “familiar” with the glitterati. Why had that not occurred to her before? And Tomaž was at the museum and the after party. And Maja…
Jesus. Maybe Tomaž killed them both? Maybe that oily fucker had worked up from sleaze ball to serial killer. That seemed really unlikely. Maybe he was just covering his tracks or Katarina had threatened to leave him.
Gregor came out of the kitchen. His shoulders were tight and his eyes were tired. He set his phone on the table on top of the stack of papers Jo had ignored while she pieced together Tomaž’s dastardliness. She looked at the bright screen at the end of a series of text messages with Tomaž. Services for Helena were going to be the next day at her brother’s house in Škofja Loka.
Jo looked up at Gregor. “Did he say anything else?”
“Only that Matjaž wanted you and I there. He said he was sorry to hear about Maja. She had been a good employee.”
“That fucker.”
“Jo, I know you don’t like him, but…”
“He’s just… Do you think he could have killed her? And Helena?”
“Tomaž is a lot of things, some of them particularly unpleasant, but I really don’t see him as a murderer. I doubt he’d have the stomach for it. And what could he possibly have against Maja?”
“I detest him.” She wanted to tell him what she knew about Maja and Tomaž, but then she’d also have to tell him how she knew.
“That doesn’t make him capable of killing someone.”
“Even to keep his wife from leaving him?”
“You could be on to something there.” Gregor sat in the chair next to her and leaned back crossing his ankles under the table. “All of ‘his’ money is actually her money. Her family has bankrolled most of his ventures.”
“That sounds like a motive.”
Gregor sat up and leaned closer to her. “No.”
“No, what?”
“No. You are not going to turn into Nancy Drew on this.”
“Of course not. Why would you think that?” She shuffled the papers in front of her.
“Because you have that look, like you’re plotting something.”
“I’m not plotting anything. I’m just wondering who could possibly kill two people I know in less than a week. It’s weird. And awful. And maddening.”
“It is. But I don’t know if I believe Maja’s murder has anything to do with Helena.”
“How can you not?” She left out the part about both women being directly connected to her.
He looked at her, his concern clear. “I’m less worried they are connected to each other and more worried they are connected to you, but I can’t for the life of me think of any reason for it.”
She started to tell him. She wanted to, but telling him would compound his worry, not lessen it. She nodded and took his hand. She needed to change the subject. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For listening earlier and believing me.”
“Of course I believed you. Just promise me you won’t get any more involved in this than you already are.”
“I promise.” She didn’t cross her fingers under the table but she might as well have.
Chapter 16
Lichtenberg called Leo that morning when he learned of the second murder. Vesna had beaten him to it by a half hour. She had done her best to remain calm and factual, but Leo noticed the slimmest edge of panic in her voice. She didn’t say it, but she feared for her friend’s life. He wasn’t afraid for Jo yet, but he was concerned. An old and malevolent thing had been awakened; of that, he had no doubt. And for such a supernatural entity, Jo would be a beacon without a shade.
A faint knock on the door signaled the arrival of Leo’s unwelcome guest. He crossed the small chamber to the door.
Lichtenberg stepped into Leo’s space. It took everything he had not to push Lichtenberg back through the open door and slam it on him.
“How do you live here?” Lichtenberg ran a hand over the top of his head where he’d grazed it stooping through the door.
“The monastery wasn’t built in a time of giants.” Leo motioned for his guest to sit in the straight backed chair next to the low table he used as a nightstand. He sat on the edge of his bunk.
“I have many concerns. Some I am certain you share.”
Leo nodded.
“Jolene Wiley is a Portal. She is untrained. Surely you can extrapolate the rest.” Lichtenberg’s stare bore through him.
“A Portal?” That was not the news he expected. Vesna was right to be concerned for her life. He didn’t think they still existed. He really wasn’t sure he believed they ever had existed. “Does she know?”
“No. I have received permission to approach her to explain the danger.” He leaned back against the chair and crossed his arms over his chest.
Leo stood and walked to the cabinet next to the door. “I think it would be better if I told her.”
Lichtenberg laughed. “And what do you know of Portals?”
“It isn’t what I know of Portals; it’s what I know of her.” He crossed back to where Lichtenberg sat and looked down into the
man’s face. Everything about him was tidy and clean, but he still looked like a dust mote. His hair, his skin, his suit, even his eyes: everything about him was a shade of the same gray, the gray of the sky on a particularly shitty day.
“She doesn’t distrust me. To her, I am the funny little neighbor.” Lichtenberg’s gaze never wavered as he looked up into Leo’s face. “No. I will tell her.”
Leo didn’t argue. He picked his battles. Lichtenberg’s next announcement would be that for her “protection,” he wanted to take Jo into custody. Leo would go to the mat to prevent that. As his father had said, the Board had a way of disappearing anyone deemed a threat. He would not let that happen to her.
Lichtenberg continued. “I am concerned for her well-being. There are others, other supernatural beings, who may want to use Ms. Wiley’s powers for their purposes. Do you know of Rok Zorko, the Long-lived?”
“Only what Vesna has mentioned in passing. He is a friend of Jo’s. I didn’t realize he was different.” The Long-lived were of little interest to Leo’s family, as long as they kept to themselves.
“He is very old, and I find his interest in Ms. Wiley troubling, especially given the current circumstances.” Lichtenberg looked down at his hands in his lap.
Lichtenberg cared for her. Despite all his smug, asinine behavior, he cared what happened to Jo. The revelation was stunning. Leo never thought the man capable of human emotion.
“She has known him a long time. I doubt his interest is nefarious. They are friends and according to Vesna, he is one of the few people Jo has told about her new gift.”
Lichtenberg looked up at him. What looked like disbelief flitted across his face. “I hope you are right.”
“Tell her if you must.” If he was going to build a truce with Lichtenberg, it was his turn to give. “The item stolen was a Roman doll made of clay. My friend at the museum said she was glad the thing was gone. It gave everyone there the creeps.”
Lichtenberg’s eyes narrowed. “How long have you known?”
“Since last night.”
He relaxed again. “It is as I thought, then. Poppets and dolls were commonly used as Vessels.”
Who By Water Page 16
