Deadly Sin (Cassandra Farbanks)

by Sonnet O'Dell

  A couple of months ago I received some anonymous gifts. Each had a little card that together made up one of the worst roses are red poems I’d ever seen. He warned he, was coming for me and I wouldn’t escape. I was especially creeped out with the last gift of chocolates laced with a paralyzing agent. I didn’t eat any. After that, when I didn’t get anything more, I assumed he’d given up because his plan hadn’t worked. I took everything to Hamilton who helped me file a police report. I knew from the little piece of paper that it was the same person, but the message was completely benign. It simply read Here. You will need this.

  I looked at the little key again before putting it and the note back in the envelope and into my other pocket. I stepped out into the weak October sunlight, the chill in the air making my cheeks flush. I stopped in town at the Java Hut kiosk to get my first cup of coffee to keep the chill away. October is always a weird month for weather. You feel the approach of winter on days like today, and on others, summer still trying to make its presence felt. I like those days better. I’m a summer person and like to be warm. I walked along with the Java Hut cup, a brown paper thing with two golden palm leaves and Java Hut written across it in jazzy purple script, wondering if I would have to start wearing gloves soon. The only thing that stopped my fingers from going numb was the warmth of the paper cup.

  Grimoires is located on a grey and yellow stone cobbled courtyard designed into an eye catching tribal sun, if you spend most of your time watching your shoes. The store is off an alley between two other businesses on one of the back streets. Two large, half hexagonal windows frame the door, each with thick, dark red velvet curtains and spotless iron-framed glass panes. The one on the right holds a display of pagan symbology, a skull with a fresh red rose enchanted to never fade, and a goblet and ceremonial blade carved with the phases of the moon. Although the frontage is painted dark to play to a tourist market, a reminder posted in the left hand window states that it’s a white magic establishment. As I rounded the corner into the courtyard, I saw the open sign across the door written to look like blood and Trinket standing at the till visible through the left-sided window. She happily rang up purchases for an elderly witch whose white hair coiled neatly in a chignon and wore official council robes. I walked in, listening to the bell’s tinkle above the door. The woman looked over her shoulder, her face wizened, but her eyes sharp. She looked at me with all due attention, while Trinket gave a little wave. Pretending to take an interest in some crystals displayed on a table near the door, I watched her out of the corner of my eye as she assessed me. Any council member would be interested in other people who patronized Truth’s store. I saw a spark of recognition from the old woman before turning quickly back to Trinket handing over her purchases.

  “I put your receipt in the bag.”

  “Thank you young lady, I must go now.” The witch snatched up her purchases and bustled out the door in a sudden hurry. I got that response from council members sometimes, like I carried some contagion they might catch if they stayed in a room too long with me. It also led to my poor opinion of the wizard council. I walked over to the counter.

  “Hey boss,” said Trinket, putting the witch’s credit card slip into the till. I love the till at Truth’s shop. It is an old Victorian thing where the numbers come up on little cards behind a glass pane and the keys sit on elegant black stems like those of a typewriter. The modern chip and pin credit card machine looks really out of place next to it. “Checking up on me?”

  “Not at all,” I said with a smile. “I came to see Truth.” Trinket’s smile lowered as she looked at me.

  “Miss Mallory isn’t here today. She’s at an estate sale.” I put my coffee down on the counter amazed that Truth trusted Trinket enough to run the store for her. Trinket lifted my cup and slid a coaster under it. I sighed and rooted around in my pocket for the piece of paper. I pulled out the scrap I wrote the symbol on and smoothed it out flat on the counter. Trinket examined it carefully.

  “When she gets back, I need her to look for me and tell me what this is?”

  “Pig!”

  I looked at Trinket with a furrowed brow, not sure whether or not I was being insulted. I put my fists on my hips while she stared at me blankly.

  “Excuse me?”

  Trinket turned the piece of paper so she looked at the symbol the right way up and nodded her head in acknowledgment.

  “It’s drawn kind of badly but it’s the Chinese symbol for pig.” Trinket reached under the counter and brought out a magazine she reads while things are slow. She flipped it open and thumbed through the pages till she came to a section on the Chinese zodiac. She laid it flat, turned it to me and tapped it with her finger. “See.”

  I stared at the printed image and my crude drawing. They were recognizably the same, but I was definitely no calligrapher. However, that meant that the dead man had the Chinese character for pig on his forehead – the animal associated with gluttony. I looked around the shop as if something would suddenly jump out at me. I fixed my eyes on Trinket again.

  “I need a book on the seven deadly sins and any magic practices they are involved with.” Trinket looked at me blankly and held up her hands in a “forgive me” gesture.

  “I think you over estimate what I do here. I don’t know the stock, only Miss Malory does. I just ring stuff up, and if it comes from that wall it’s got to be paid for by a credit card.” She indicated the shelves behind the counters and down to the back of the store, and the books containing actual magic in them.

  “The minute she gets back you have her call me,” I said turning the paper over so I could write on the back. I searched my pockets for a pen when Trinket rolled one across the counter at me. She had problems picking up and gripping pens I remembered. I wrote on the back, Seven deadly sins plus magic equals what? Call me. Cassandra.

  “Make sure she gets that and knows that it’s very, very important.” Trinket nodded taking the piece of paper and tucking it safely under a pewter fairy next to the till.

  “Don’t worry. I won’t forget. It’s grocery day,” she said brightly changing the subject, “was there anything you wanted for dinner?” I thought about it.

  “No, no, nothing special. But we are almost out of ice cream.”

  “There was half a tub left last week,” said Trinket accusingly. I grumbled a little but quickly rallied. Ice cream is my vice. Everybody has one. I didn’t smoke, gamble or drink. Well, not anymore since my bender in late March.

  “Well it’s gone. You’ve already rationed me to one tub a month. It’s almost a new month and I would like a new tub.”

  “Fine, but I’m not getting you the Chunky Monkey again; not after last time. It’s getting too cold for ice cream. You can have one of those frozen yogurt ones. Probably better for you.” I grumbled louder, snatched up my coffee and took a long swallow.

  “Fine. I’ve got to go and pop into the police station.” Fussing over a pile of the shop’s mail, Trinket turned her glacial blue eyes to me. Nothing can stare you down like a clockwork doll. They don’t need to blink.

  “Please call if you’re going to be late for dinner.”

  “I shouldn’t be there that long.”

  “I’ve heard that before. Call if you’re going to be late.”

  I walked out of Grimoires muttering to myself that she supposedly worked for me. Do what I tell you to do. Instead, I’m embroiled in conversations about why I can’t have full fat ice cream, or how having a hamburger more than once in two weeks is bad for me. It’s like rooming with the food police. If that wasn’t bad enough, I noticed this morning – which is why I bought coffee out – that she switched me to decaf without telling me. Decaf is practically sacrilege. However, I feel that by the time she goes on her round the world tour in January one of us is going to go insane and it won’t be her.

  Chapter Four

  I walked into Homicide as someone who had an appointment to keep – although in truth, it was rare for me to call ahead. I got into a b
ad habit of expecting people to expect me. So when I got there, Hamilton was not in his office. I was even more surprised to find a man with a neatly trimmed beard manning a spare desk.

  The desk in question was at a right angle to Hamilton’s office and although it had held a computer, a filing tray and a phone, no one had ever sat at it before.

  Almost unconsciously, I approached the new person when he looked up. His eyes were very dark and, like Hamilton, had to be in his late thirties or early forties. I guessed, as he was sitting, that he was about my height. A little short for a guy, but he was a boulder of a man. He had the neck and shoulders of someone who hit the gym and weight room very seriously. Those dark, intelligent eyes weighed me, hiding under thick, black brows that matched his wiry hair and beard. Although the beard had a little red in it, maybe it was really dark brown, not black. His nose was a little crooked like it’d been broken once in a fight – whether that had been on or off duty I couldn’t tell. He raised his brows, scanning me from my feet up. I was glad I’d buttoned my coat so that he couldn’t see that I was wearing a Nine Inch Nails t-shirt. When he reached my face his eyes lingered there, looking at my chin and lips intensely before looking into my eyes. I knew the exact moment he did because I was waiting for it. I stared him down, letting him know I was every bit a match for him. He coughed, giving himself an excuse to look away first while he rose to his feet. I was right about his height.

  “Can I help you miss?” His voice was surprisingly higher that I imagined, but then I half expected him to just grunt and growl to communicate.

  “I’m here to see Paris,” I said. He too was surprised by my voice which was more contralto than soprano. Hamilton once said to me that I had a very “come to the bedroom” voice that threw most men off when I was just talking about nominal things like socks. Apparently, I made socks sound sexy. He looked me up and down again, making another, quicker assessment of me. The next time I got a flash of those dark eyes I could clearly read the thought in them. He believed that Hamilton was having sex with me. Just a work colleague wouldn’t have used his first name. I meant to show that I knew Hamilton well, but accidentally portrayed too much intimacy. I also got the feeling that he knew Hamilton well enough not to believe that he could just be friends with me.

  “Who are you?” I asked him. If his eyes could be so rude, I figured my mouth had the right to be. “I’ve not seen you here before.” I implied that I came in more often than I did. If he asked me to name any of the officers now watching our exchange he’d know it wasn’t true.

  “Detective Sergeant Martin Butcher,” he said, slipping his hands into the pockets of his impeccably starched black pants, “I’ve been away.”

  I thought about that. The first time I came across Hamilton was just over a year ago. He didn’t have a detective sergeant then, so Butcher has been on leave a long time. I held out my hand, forcing him to shake it.

  “I’m Cassandra.” He blinked and did a double take. He’d heard my name before. I wondered if that was good or bad.

  “You’re the Farbanks woman?” I don’t think I’ve heard it put more gruffly. I expected, “oh, you’re that witch” or “yes, Hamilton’s mentioned you”. I was sure Detective Sergeant Butcher officially decided he wasn’t going to like me on principle. The principle was a mystery to me. He shoved his hand back into his pocket and silence fell. We reached a conversational impasse.

  “Hamilton in?” I pointed to the door ajar, even though I knew he wasn’t in.

  “He’s just popped downstairs to the lab.”

  “I’ll just wait in his office then till he gets back.” He was going to object but the set of my shoulders brooked no discussion. I pushed open the door, went inside and shut it behind me. I watched his silhouette through the glass as he walked around to his desk and picked up the phone. I knew he was calling Hamilton back upstairs which was fine by me. I wouldn’t have to wait long. There was a manila folder sitting on Hamilton’s desk he’d been reading when he got a call to go down to the lab. Thinking it might be information pertinent to the case – okay, I was just being plain nosy – I turned the file so I could read what was inside. There were three pieces of paper. One was a grainy photocopy of a birth certificate for Ozborne Farbanks listing his parents as a V. Toogood and a H. Farbanks. The second was a print out of a marriage license of Ozborne Farbanks to a woman whose name was so scribbled you could only just about make out that her initials were M and perhaps a D, B or R. The last page was a search from the national database of marriages, births and deaths for Worcester where my name had been put in but there were no results.

  I was stunned to complete silence. Even my breathing stopped just for a minute. Was Hamilton investigating me? He’d been searching for my birth certificate and found no record of my birth. Which after a minute of thinking, its absence made sense to me. My mother hid me. She had a home birth and wouldn’t register that fact.

  The thing was I knew I had one. I’d seen it. It had my name, date of birth and my parents listed as Morganna and Ozborne Farbanks. It wasn’t a forgery. They waited till they’d crossed over to register me. They had forty two days to do it. I got back to the matter at hand. Why was Hamilton digging into my past? I could show him a copy of my birth certificate if he just asked me. They’d be the same in both worlds or near enough. I heard a voice outside the door and saw a hand turning the knob.

  Hamilton came in and found me sitting in one of his guest chairs, the folder exactly the way it was when I walked into the room. I looked up at him and he looked uncertain for a moment, expecting me to jump down his throat about investigating me. I beamed at him and he relaxed, incorrectly thinking that I hadn’t read the file. That I’d been a good girl and just sat in a chair and waited. That was what I wanted him to believe for the moment. I was still wrapping my head around it. There were few people I thought I could trust and I thought Hamilton had been one of them. I didn’t want him to know that I knew he was investigating me. It would be an unspoken secret between us. He walked around his desk with another manila folder in his hand, nonchalantly using it to move the other one to his filing tray.

  “I’m glad to see you Cassandra. I take it you’re here because you’ve got something.”

  “I might have but I think we should talk about a couple of other things first.” He paused on the way down into his chair, looking distinctly guilty about something. I pointed to the folder on the desk.

  “Is that the autopsy report? Do we finally have cause of death for…” I let my sentence drop off, obliging him with a slow slice of my hand to tell me the man’s name. Hamilton relaxed back into his chair.

  “Callaghan, John Callaghan. Yes, Doc Cameron just finished compiling his findings from the autopsy and Doctor Soltaire’s finding from last night.” I motioned with my hand for him to continue.

  “So what did John Callaghan die of?”

  “He drowned.” I arched a brow and shook my head sure I had misheard him.

  “He drowned? How? We found him in the dining room, not the pool.” Did the house even have a pool?

  “You can drown in other things than water, Cassandra.” He said, shaking his head.

  “Okay, color me confused. How did he drown?” Hamilton opened up the report and spread out the contents before continuing.

  “It looks like he ate so much that his stomach burst. There was massive tissue trauma to the whole belly area. It didn’t kill him though. Doc Cameron tells me it takes up to two weeks to die from losing your intestines.”

  “Doc Cameron is always full of fun little facts to show and tell. So his stomach explodes? How did that cause him to drown?”

  “The intense sudden pain caused him to go into shock. He vomited, but because he was still shoveling food into his mouth, it couldn’t come out and then he passed out.”

  “Gross. You’re telling me he drowned in his own vomit?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m telling you. His lungs were full of it. We can’t understand why. He just d
idn’t stop eating. Your stomach is supposed to send a signal to your brain to tell you it’s full, it’s like someone turned off the relay and he just kept eating and eating…”

  “So, unless I can definitively prove magical involvement, it’s like he did it to himself. I need to prove he was compelled to eat himself to death.”

  Hamilton looked at me expectantly and I motioned with my hands to put it to one side. I needed a minute to, for lack of a better word, digest the information.

  “Before I tell you what I’ve found. I need to make the subject personal.” Again, Hamilton looked like he’d been waiting for this. I reached into my pocket and pushed its contents across the desk to him.

  “My stalker is back. This was in my mailbox this morning.” Hamilton’s attention sharpened and he tipped the contents out into his waiting palm. I watched him push the key aside with the tip of his finger so he could read the note that accompanied it.

  “You got any idea what it’s for?” he asked, holding the key between two fingers and looking at the patterned head.

  “Not the foggiest, unless he plans to send me the thing the key fits, later. More importantly does this signify a new wave of gifts?” Hamilton put the key and note back in the envelope and into his pocket to deal with later.

  “It’s certainly in the same style as the previous notes, but why now? He’s been gone a good while after his first attempt failed.” I nodded. There hadn’t been a single gift or creepy message. I’d also worked a better ward so now dark shadowy familiars with a Cheshire cat grin couldn’t get into my apartment. Hamilton obviously thought back to the events that surrounded those messages, my accident with the wall, because he focused on my left arm.

  “How’s the arm now?”