I thought he’d said cooperating, but the last sentence sounded like he meant competing. My phone rang before I could point this out to him.
“Oh no.” My heart parachute jumped out of my ribcage. It was Mrs. Dunst. “Earnest’s mom is wondering whether I’ve found him. What do I tell her?”
Connor grabbed the phone from me and turned it off. “We’ll let the police tell her. They’ll be here soon.”
“But we were supposed to meet. And she told me to search here. What if she comes looking for me?”
“Then we’ll deal with it if she does.”
I felt the urge to heave again, but there was nothing left in my stomach. “She deserves to know.” My voice cracked. She’d looked after him for the past twenty-nine years of her life. My grief would be nothing compared to hers. She needed to know.
Connor wiped my cheek, and I discovered it was wet again. “She’ll know soon enough. And you shouldn’t have to break the news. You can tell her the police wouldn’t let you answer your phone.” His knuckles grazed my other cheek. “I’ll see if I have a handkerchief in the car.”
He returned a moment later and passed me an immaculate, pressed white handkerchief. After a prick of regret at ruining it, I mopped up my tears and blew my nose before it could start producing snot bubbles.
“That’s some hay fever you’ve got there,” Connor said when I was done. “I didn’t realize you were allergic to the Christmas season.”
I stuffed the handkerchief in my pocket, not about to give it back in its current condition. “Did you just make a joke?”
“I don’t know. You’d have to tell me the definition of one first.”
That was definitely a joke. Not a very good one, but still. “Are you trying to cheer me up?”
He patted my shoulder. “Just making sure you represent the Taste Society in the best possible light to Commander Hunt.”
Despite Connor’s good intentions, Police Commander Hunt was utterly unimpressed. He was a combination of tough cowboy and ex-military man, with a steel-gray buzz cut, sun-weathered face, and bristly mustache that’d stab you if you came too close. I got the impression he could kill without blinking and probably ate rawhide for breakfast. He made his way over to us with a lazy, controlled swagger and sized me up like I was a mound of horse manure.
“The first thing most people do when they find a dead body is call the police,” he informed me. “So you must be yet another recruit of the bloody Taste Society.” His frown told me plenty of what he thought about that.
“It’s just the Taste Society, Commander,” Connor said.
“I’ll bear that in mind, Stiles. Now what the hell do we have here?”
“Come see for yourself. Isobel, you might as well stay outside.”
I felt like chewed-up and spat-out rawhide, so I took the reprieve and slunk to my car, which was boxed in by Connor’s SUV and Hunt’s police cruiser. Connor had kept my phone, which meant I couldn’t call Mrs. Dunst back even if I could’ve summoned the wherewithal to do it. Instead, I stared at nothing and wished I could start the day over. Two days over. Last night, Earnest had asked if I wanted to stay up late and watch the new Star Wars movie with him. He’d even offered to make me a nest out of his comforter and pillows, knowing how much I liked to snuggle up in the cooler weather. What if I’d stayed? I’d been tired, but I could’ve fallen asleep on the couch. Would he still be alive?
I used Connor’s hanky again.
He and Commander Hunt came out about ten minutes later. I scrambled out of the car and stood at attention before I realized what I was doing.
Hunt’s focus zeroed in on me. “Unless the coroner reports otherwise, the LAPD will regard this death the way it appears. An overdose by a known drug addict. Nevertheless, as the person who might’ve seen him last and discovered the body, I’d like you to come down to the station at some point today and give your statement.”
“Why not let her give it to you here and now?” Connor asked.
The commander’s attention didn’t leave me. “You got better things to do this afternoon? Like hide the evidence maybe?”
It took a second for his words to filter through my miasma of misery. “Wha—” I shook my head hard enough to make me dizzy. “No, sir.”
“That’s commander to you, and don’t you forget it. Now I need to go break the news to his poor mother. Stay out of trouble.” His glare shifted to Connor. “The both of you. Any enquiries you make, Stiles, you make under your own PI name. None of this police consultant shit unless we open an official investigation, got it?”
Connor nodded. “Not my first rodeo, Commander.” Apparently I wasn’t the only one who thought Hunt was cowboy-esque.
The cowboy swaggered to his unmarked police vehicle and drove off without a backward glance. All that was missing was a horse and a sunset. And justice for Earnest.
“So, what do you think of our top-secret LAPD liaison?”
It was part of how the authorities covered up the underground poison scene, along with the existence of the Taste Society. Only a few select law enforcement agents in each precinct were in the know, and they made sure to oversee the relevant cases. I didn’t miss his emphasis on “top secret,” either, a reminder to keep my mouth shut.
“Cuddly as a shoebox full of kittens,” I said. “He seems to like you a bunch. What did you do to him?”
“Same as you. Work for the Taste Society.” He paused for a beat. “And solve a whole lot of cases before he could.”
Let the chest puffing begin. I wasn’t in the mood for egos or politics, but a bit of healthy competition might increase the chances of finding Earnest’s killer. If he hadn’t killed himself that is. I shoved the thought aside, refusing to believe it. Somehow it would make his death even more tragic. I blinked to hold back tears and then blinked again before remembering my focus-on-the-case strategy. “Where do we start?”
Connor assessed me. His wintry-gray eyes were positively gooey compared to Hunt’s ice-blue ones. “What makes you think there’s a ‘we’?”
“Common sense. You can’t chase up Earnest’s known enemies without something to go on, and right now we don’t even know for sure he’s been murdered. Seems like you need to work out whether he was abducted or left the apartment of his own free will while you wait for the autopsy and tox results. Which means you’ll start at his home to look for indicators, and it’d be helpful to have someone along who can tell you if anything’s out of place.”
“Have you been studying?”
I had been, kind of. I’d had a lot of time to read while Earnest was on his computer, and I’d accidentally gravitated toward PI detective stories. Standing next to Connor now had me hoping there weren’t any Freudian implications behind my newfound interest.
“You did once tell me that I’m a quick learner,” I hedged.
“Well, you’re almost right. First, we’re going to pay a visit to the convenience store where Earnest bought his Cheetos. You can follow me there, but don’t get any ideas about staying on the case.” His gaze raked over me, and I wondered if he was appreciating the view or marveling that he’d ever found me attractive. “I’d hate for it to become a habit.”
He was leaning against his black SUV, a picture of stunning, unruffled perfection despite his time in the rat- and spider-infested darkness with a dead body and grumpy police commander. Being in his vicinity for the past hour had made me flustered and self-conscious in all sorts of ways I hadn’t felt in months. I didn’t like it.
“Me too,” I agreed.
I wasn’t sure if I was lying.
3
The kid behind the counter at Diego’s Convenience Store hadn’t been working at one thirty in the morning, but he was happy to let us watch the security footage. “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” played in the background as Connor fast-forwarded to the time stamp on the Cheetos receipt.
We watched a grainy image of Earnest enter the store. His posture and movements portrayed nervou
sness. But there wasn’t enough detail to see whether he was under the influence of anything, and since he looked nervous whenever he left his home, it was hard to glean much from it. Except that he was alone.
Unless his abductor had known about the security camera and forced him to go in alone. But why would they make him buy Cheetos Bolitas? It made no sense. And when he took the receipt, it seemed as if he smiled for a second. In anticipation of the cheese-flavored goodness? Or because he was high as a kite and thought the guy behind the counter looked like a buxom beauty in one of those skintight sci-fi suits he found so appealing? Impossible to tell.
Connor made a sneaky copy of the footage, just in case, and we left the back room. “When’s the guy who was working last night’s graveyard shift scheduled next?” he asked the helpful kid behind the counter.
I winced. Poor word choice.
“Tonight, from midnight,” the kid said.
We thanked him and agreed to travel the two blocks to Earnest’s place in convoy. Judging by the way my elasticized waistband was digging in, I should’ve walked. But I excused myself by reasoning that two blocks wouldn’t have touched the extra pounds anyway.
I’m pretty sure it’s that kind of logic that leads to the downfall of resolutions everywhere.
Connor turned off route. I flashed my high beams at him to let him know he was lost, but he didn’t stop until we arrived at a bakery.
I pulled in behind him, and he came over to my window. “Has it been long enough since you worked at Bakers Bliss that you can enjoy a jelly-filled donut, or should we go somewhere else?” he asked.
I opened my mouth and shut it again without any words coming out.
“You’ve had a rough morning. From what I remember, you’re partial to comfort food, right?”
My heart swelled like a bread roll you dropped in the lake. Before it was devoured by the ducks. I was so touched that I had to fight back tears. You know it’s been a bad day when the offer of a jelly donut makes you cry.
“A jelly-filled donut sounds great,” I said.
We sat at one of the two tables the bakery had out front. There was a chill in the air, but I didn’t feel like being cooped up inside. Connor surprised me by buying a donut for himself as well. Somehow he managed to eat it without getting powdered sugar everywhere. He waited until I’d finished licking sugar off my own face and fingers before speaking.
“Tell me what happened this morning.”
I told him.
He listened studiously, jotting the odd note in the battered spiral-bound notepad he carried around for this purpose. I never had figured out why he used that over the expensive leather version I’d first expected.
When I got to the part about visiting the drug dens, he laid the notepad on the table. Maybe to avoid crushing it. “Please tell me you didn’t go alone.”
“Um.”
“Or that you at least carried pepper spray to protect yourself. Tasers don’t always work on drug users.”
“Well…”
“Shit, Avery. Didn’t I teach you anything?”
He sounded upset. It took a lot to make Connor upset.
“Sorry.” I didn’t have the experience to know it was that dangerous. The only drug use I’d seen firsthand was people smoking weed at parties, and I’d been too worried about Earnest to stop and think about how different that was.
He spread a hand over his face. “Sure. That’s what I’ll tell Etta and Oliver and your parents when you wind up dead.” His hand dropped, and we both waited until his normal calm expression returned. “Right. Finish the story.”
I got through the rest without further incident. Connor offered to buy me something else from the bakery, but I declined. The food and debrief had shored me up, and I felt less breakable. Time to get on with it.
The white painted brick exterior of Earnest’s apartment building stood unchanged from the morning’s events. Connor handed me a pair of latex gloves. “Let’s do a methodical search for anything out of place.”
I used my spare key again, and we slipped inside.
The familiar, stuffy, yet not unpleasant scent of Earnest’s apartment hit me like a brick to the face. Salty and artificial, like stale junk food. At least when an animal hadn’t died in the crawl space below anyway, which happened more often than you might think.
Earnest wouldn’t have to deal with that again. Because he wouldn’t ever come home again. Falling apart wouldn’t help though, so I ignored the tightness in my throat and scanned the narrow entry hall. Empty coatrack for his infrequent guests. Fan poster of the Firefly crew and a second one of StarCraft. Black umbrella propped in the corner where it had sat unused, possibly for years, seeing as it almost never rained in LA and Earnest leaving the house was an even rarer phenomenon. I hadn’t thought about how extraneous it was. I would’ve teased him about it if he were here. Another painful pang.
We went to the bedroom next, Connor a comforting and distracting presence at my back. As cool and impassive as he tended to be, we’d developed a camaraderie that bordered on something more when our jobs had forced us to spend every waking moment together. Then our assignments had wrapped up, and he’d walked out of my life and disappeared.
Of all the times I’d thought about seeing him again, I’d never considered it might take a tragedy to make it happen.
I returned my focus to the task at hand, drawing strength from the walls that had kept Earnest penned and protected for the past three years. You wouldn’t know he was rich by the way he lived. Before his spiral into anxiety and addiction, he’d had a stressful, lucrative job as a programmer and had designed an iPhone app on the side that set him up for life. But his apartment was budget middle-class fare and sparsely furnished except for the who-knows-how-many thousands of dollars of technological equipment. He didn’t even own the place, just rented it.
If I had that kind of money, I’d need a bigger house to fit all my coffee equipment in. Some people fantasize about BDSM. I fantasize about properly roasted, freshly extracted espresso.
Earnest’s bedroom wasn’t a space I’d spent much time in. Without any witnesses, there’d been no point in sleeping over to maintain my girlfriend cover. His queen-size bed was neatly made. Because he hadn’t pulled off the covers to make a nest for me. Because I’d skipped the movie and gone home. Because I’d abandoned him. There was no evidence of him using it last night.
Nothing on his bedside table except a bunch of cords to charge his various devices. I hadn’t paid that much attention, but it seemed right. More sci-fi posters adorned the walls. A small bookshelf filled with computer coding and hacking books that made my eyes cross over even trying to make sense of the titles.
I moved to his wardrobe. Identical black T-shirts hung on wire coat hangers. No surprises there. I’d never seen him wear anything else. A stacked pile of shorts, black as well, sat next to a few pairs of jeans. His underwear was the only splash of color and featured more sci-fi paraphernalia. I suspected his mom bought them for him seeing as there was no way he would have chosen the Iron Man pair. The thought of his scrawny, pasty frame in the red “armor-plated” undies almost made me smile.
A lonely suit hung at the very rear of the wardrobe. I wondered how long it had been since he’d worn it and whether he’d wear it at his funeral. I shut the wardrobe door and locked that thought in there with it.
“All seems normal so far,” I reported to Connor, who was standing too close behind me. He laid a steadying hand on my back, like he knew how fragile I felt inside. Or like maybe he was glad to see me again too. Then he stepped aside, and we made our way into the en-suite.
What I wouldn’t give to walk in and find Earnest on the toilet.
Not a Christmas wish I’d ever expected to have.
But like this morning, it was empty of both people and clues. As was the kitchen, laundry, and dining room, although there might have been a mouse in the pantry. It reminded me of Meow, and I had the strongest urge to race home and find comf
ort in her soft fur, rumbling purrs, and vicious delight in chasing roaches.
I’d subconsciously saved the most likely room for last. The living area doubled as Earnest’s work and gaming station, and if he hadn’t gone to bed, chances were he’d been sitting here until he’d left or been abducted. It was also the room I knew best, as I usually hung out on the couch reading when I wasn’t cooking or eating. I scanned the space carefully, wishing I’d paid more attention or had spy training so I’d remember random stuff like this. And so I could do jujitsu.
Two computers and three large monitors angled around his desk in their usual positions and were plugged into the backup power supply underneath. A precaution against the building’s faulty wiring that kept tripping despite two call outs by an electrician. Brightly wrapped Christmas presents and a bowl of candy canes occupied the back left corner. Those were compliments of Mrs. Dunst. She thought it was too sad to have no decorations at all but also knew the only kinds her son would care for.
My throat ached from holding in my grief.
Earnest was compulsively neat, except for junk food and its corresponding rubbish which somehow escaped the radar. As I looked over his workstation again, I remembered with embarrassment that the three Cheetos Bolitas packets and four candy cane wrappers on his desk were all eaten yesterday by the two of us.
At least Connor couldn’t tell when they were eaten. Or so I hoped.
The important takeaway was, it didn’t seem like Earnest had eaten anything without me. Which meant it was unlikely that he’d unwittingly consumed drugs that might affect his behavior. But his mouse was half off its pad.
“There.” I pointed. “Earnest wouldn’t have left his mouse that way. Not under normal circumstances.”
Connor eyed the desk, littered with wrappers, dubiously. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Was his mouse like that when you came looking for him this morning?”
The Hunger Pains (An Eat, Pray, Die Humorous Mystery Book 2) Page 3
