“So, this poison pen thing happens in books,” Jesse said flatly. “In novels.”
Gavin chimed in. “Yeah, Karl. That sort of thing only happens in books.”
Karl's face flushed to a plum shade. He let out another HARUMPH.
Margaret banged on the break-room table with her fist. “I need to see this scandalous book of Annette's immediately. Where is it?”
Dawna bobbed her head from side to side. “Beats me! Probably on the computer network. She might have had a printout somewhere, too. Like, for proofreading or whatever.”
Jesse said, “Wacky as it sounds, I'd like to see that book, too.”
“We need to find it now,” Gavin said. “Before the police get here and lock everything down.”
Zinnia spoke up. “Speaking of which, why aren't they here yet?”
Everyone started speaking at once about their experiences with the town's law enforcement agency.
Karl waved both hands to get everyone's attention. “I'm in charge here, and I'm ordering everyone to look for Annette's book. And when you find it, give it to me.”
Jesse grinned at Karl. “You're not in charge of me, man. I'm technically my own department. Special Buildings Permits.”
“Fine,” Karl blustered. “Don't help us look for the book. Make yourself useful anyway. Put on a fresh pot of coffee.”
Jesse gave Karl an army salute. “Your wish is my command.”
The three women got up from the table and followed Gavin and Karl out to the main area of the office. Zinnia tried not to look anywhere near the body of Annette Scholem, but her eyes kept pointing there anyway. Poor Annette. They hadn't even taken the time to close the poor woman's eyes.
Gavin stepped over Annette's body as though it was nothing but a pile of clothes. He yanked open the drawers of her desk and started ransacking them.
“Gavin, not like that,” Karl barked. “Look with your eyes, not your hands. Don't get your bloody fingerprints all over everything.”
Gavin waved both his hands at Karl. “Look. It's okay,” he said. “I washed all the blood off.”
“You're standing in blood,” Karl said.
Dawna made an un-Dawna-like burp. “I'm gonna be sick,” she said. “You people are all crazy. You act like Annette's not lying right there on the floor, staring up at heaven.”
Gavin continued rummaging through Annette's desk drawers, muttering, “If I was an author, where would I hide my book?”
Yeah, right. Zinnia was fairly certain Gavin was still looking for the pen. She used her magic to roll it deeper under the bookcase for safekeeping.
Karl went to the filing cabinets on the far wall and started opening file folders and binders frantically.
Margaret stood off to the side, talking on her phone to someone at her kids' school. She wouldn't be of much help until she checked on her family and eased her fears.
Jesse called out from the break room, “Coffee will be ready in five minutes.”
Zinnia pressed her hand to her forehead. The morning couldn't get any more surreal, not unless she and Margaret started busting out spells, using magic to search for Annette's book. But they couldn't do that. If their coworkers learned about magic, there'd be a big mess to clean up, and it would be dealt with by the scary people who worked in the shadows. Those people would start by wiping the memories of the non-magical folks, and they might not stop there. They might even wipe the two witches, returning both Zinnia and Margaret to “factory default settings,” whatever that meant.
Zinnia turned in a slow circle, scanning the office for clues. The authorities would be arriving eventually. Once they did, she would no longer have access to the scene of the crime. She slowed her breathing and calmed her mind. What did she know so far? She looked at Gavin, who was digging through Annette's desk drawers. Gavin had been the last to leave the day before, the last one of them to see Annette alive. And now he was frantically searching for something in her desk. That was certainly suspicious.
Zinnia turned to Dawna and gave her an encouraging smile. Dawna scarcely noticed, since she was throwing up into a garbage bin. That wasn't suspicious. It was perfectly normal behavior for a person who was standing in the same room as her deceased coworker.
Zinnia looked over at the other office witch. Margaret finished talking on the phone, and, without even making eye contact with Zinnia, marched into Karl's office. Karl followed, hot on her heels. “Stay out of my office, Margaret. The book isn't in here.”
Margaret replied, “How would you know if you haven't looked?”
The two of them argued with each other while Margaret searched his drawers and shelves.
Zinnia pulled out her phone and started taking pictures of the scene. She had an excellent memory, but her coworkers were making a mess of everything faster than she could capture all the details. And she still needed to retrieve Annette's pen from under the bookcase before Gavin found it.
Suddenly, someone reached over her shoulder and yanked the phone from her hand.
An authoritative male voice boomed behind her, “Freeze, everyone! Don't move a muscle. I've got guns and Tasers. Which ones I use is up to you.”
Chapter 5
Wisteria Police Department
Office of Detective Ethan Fung
5:35 pm
Zinnia watched in awe as Detective Ethan Fung typed quickly on his computer keyboard. The man could type!
“What's your speed?” Zinnia asked playfully. “Is that ninety words a minute I'm hearing? Over a hundred?”
He smiled and kept typing.
She leaned forward, looking down her nose at his hands. “You're fast, all right, but how's the accuracy?”
He snorted but continued to smile and type. “Never you mind about my speed, Ms. Riddle, let alone my accuracy. I don't get any complaints.”
“Mm-hmm.” Zinnia leaned back and let him type, the tappity-tap-tap sounds filling the small office. Unlike the other plain, white rooms inside the Wisteria Police Department, Detective Fung's office was painted a cheery ocher color that reminded Zinnia of a chain coffee shop. The walls were decorated with peaceful pictures of nature. A large painting of the sea filled the space behind Fung's head. His desk was dark brown, oil-finished natural walnut, and very tidy. Against the side wall was a bar-sized mini-fridge and a tall bookshelf filled with books on a wide range of subjects: weather almanacs, forensic science, medical manuals, geography, history, and a whole shelf of new age and self-help books. Detective Fung was a well-read man who could make small talk with anyone. It was part of what made him an excellent detective.
Sometimes he played the role of the tough meathead cop, such as when he'd shown up at the Permits Department that morning. Sure, he had threatened to shock people with his Tasers, but that was just to get their attention. In reality, he was calm and thoughtful, and almost never shot people without provocation.
Zinnia glanced around the office for current clues into his personal life. There was no “World's Greatest” coffee mug. No personal snapshots. No clues at all, not even any indication he existed outside of the WPD. And he still didn't have a wedding band on his ring finger. Was that driving his poor mother crazy? Was Mrs. Fung still trying to set him up by ambush? Zinnia wondered why his mother's ploys hadn't worked, why he hadn't been snapped up by a woman. He was a catch, and not hard to look at.
Detective Ethan Fung had a pleasantly oval face and perfectly trimmed black hair. His eyes were dark brown, small and active, topped by thick, straight eyebrows—two eyebrows, with plenty of hair-free light brown skin between them. Having two separate eyebrows was one of many signs he wasn't like the other police officers in town. Fung's male coworkers took pride in having as much facial hair as regulations allowed. Most had a unibrow as well as a bushy mustache. Fung's face was always clean-shaven, revealing the laugh lines at the corners of his mouth. His wrinkles weren't very deep for his age. He had been born the same year as Zinnia, so he would also be forty-eight soon enough, but he didn'
t look ready. Then again, who was ready for forty-eight?
Fung punched the final keystrokes with a flourish. “And that's the story thus far,” he said in a deep yet playful storyteller voice. “Unless you have something to add, Ms. Riddle?” He placed an especially formal emphasis on her name.
“I've told you everything I know, which I'm afraid isn't much,” Zinnia said.
He pushed the keyboard away and turned to face her. “And now you just want to go home.”
She arched her back, catlike, and stretched her arms above her head. “It's been a long day.” It had been eight hours since the detective had arrived at the office and taken charge of the crime scene. The time in between had passed in a blur, a series of phone calls and interviews, most of it at the police station, solemn and businesslike, punctuated with outbursts of grieving.
Zinnia and Margaret had both been kept busy, tracking down Annette's distant next of kin and trying to keep their coworkers from imploding. Gavin had a meltdown when Karl ordered fast food for everyone to eat for lunch. Jesse had to go track down vegetable juice—freshly squeezed—to prevent a second homicide. Poor Dawna couldn't keep down any food, healthy or otherwise, and she'd also chipped three nails. The two witches hadn't found a single minute to privately discuss the situation from a magical perspective.
“You think your day has been long,” Fung said. “Mine is just beginning. And today was supposed to be my day off.”
“You love it,” she said.
He wrinkled his nose. “I do.”
She looked down at her hands. Her pale skin looked fragile, nearly blue, in the artificial light of the office. Annette's skin had looked pale, too. Zinnia swallowed down the lump that kept returning to her throat.
Softly, Fung said, “Zinnia, I'm sorry for the loss of your friend.” He exhaled audibly. “I truly am.”
She flicked her gaze up to meet his. Her voice, when it finally came out, was as hard as a rock. “Then be a good detective and catch the bad guy... or girl... or whoever it was.” Or whatever it was.
He propped his elbows on his tidy desk and folded his hands together. “The WPD will be putting all available resources to work in solving this horrific crime.”
“Will that include the type of resources that aren't so traditional?” Zinnia met his gaze confidently. “The special resources?”
He smirked. “Of course. Jerry Lund is conducting the autopsy even as we speak, and he's the best. Until we close this case, it will remain our number one priority.”
“Good,” Zinnia said. “It's the least we can do for Annette. Out of all the people working at City Hall, Annette Scholem deserved this the least.” She cleared her throat. “Not that anyone deserves to be shredded like that.”
Fung leaned back in his chair and allowed his arms to rest on the sides. “I didn't know Annette. She'd only been living in Wisteria for about a year and a half, and our paths haven't crossed until now. From what I've learned today, Annette Scholem was the kind of woman who wouldn't hurt a fly.”
Zinnia nodded. “She was the kind of woman who would convince the fly to join her bowling team.”
“It takes a real monster to hurt someone so nice.”
“Maybe it was a monster.” Her mouth went dry. “As much as I'd like to stick my head in the sand and pretend monsters don't exist, I know better.”
Fung blinked once before turning toward his bookshelf. “You know, maybe I should have become a doctor.”
Zinnia didn't respond. Maybe he should have become a doctor, somewhere far away from Wisteria. He would probably have a ring on his finger by now, and photos of chubby-cheeked babies on his doctor's office desk.
The little office was silent, yet a frenzy of noise continued just beyond the closed door, with police officers and support staff rushing around, speaking in clipped tones. Homicides did happen in Wisteria, but they didn't happen often, and today was going to be a long one for many people. For Zinnia, sitting in Fung's pleasant, ocher-colored office felt like being in the eye of a hurricane. Her gaze kept going to the painting of the seascape behind his head. She remembered him telling her about the painting once, when she'd been helping him with something years ago. He'd put the painting there on the advice of a feng shui consultant his mother had sent in.
Fung was still looking at his bookshelf, imagining life on a path he hadn't taken.
Zinnia broke the silence. “You would have been an excellent doctor.”
He broke out of the dream. “Yes, but fate had other plans,” he said wearily. “Fate. Magic. Same difference, as they say.”
Zinnia nodded. She knew Fung's history. He'd been about to graduate from medical school when a close friend—possibly his girlfriend, but he'd never said—had been murdered. Her death changed the whole trajectory of his life. He dropped out of medical school and became a police officer six months later. Then he solved his friend's murder while he was supposed to be handing out traffic violations. Rather than getting punished or thrown off the force, young Ethan Fung found himself promoted to detective. Someone clever—someone far up the command chain—had seen his value. And now here he was, all these years later, with a tasteful ocher office and no ring on his finger.
Zinnia asked, “Is today one of those days you regret making the switch?”
“Yes.” He drew himself up tall in his chair. “But by the end of the week, the regrets will be gone.” He paused. “By Friday.”
She let out a low whistle. “Today's Tuesday, Detective. Are you telling me you're going to close this case by Friday?”
His small, quick-moving eyes took on a boyish gleam. “Guaranteed by Friday, or you get your money back.”
“Guaranteed, hmm?”
A loud knock on the door surprised both of them. The air in the room sucked out as someone yanked open the door without waiting for an invitation. Zinnia turned to see her boss, Karl Kormac, standing at the doorway.
Karl said to the detective in a low, gruff voice, “Do you have a minute?” Karl looked ashen and sweaty.
“I've got a minute,” Fung said evenly. “Is there something you wanted to ask me about the case?”
Karl chewed his lower lip and eyed Zinnia. “I need to...” He looked down at his feet. “I need to change my statement.”
“Sure thing.” Fung turned to his computer and typed rapid-fire on his keyboard. “Okay, shoot. I've got the file open.”
“Now?” Karl frowned at Zinnia.
Zinnia patted the empty chair next to her. “Take a load off, boss.”
Karl remained in the doorway. He liked being called boss, and he liked sitting down, but apparently he didn't like either enough to sit beside her right now.
“Go ahead,” Fung said. “What's the change to the statement?”
“It's, uh, more of an addition.” Karl gripped the door frame and swayed, looking like a little kid reluctant to face the principal. “Last night, I couldn't sleep, so I went for a drive. And right around the time I was driving by City Hall, my stomach growled, so I decided to get a snack from the only place that was open in the middle of the night.”
Fung paused his typing. “What time was this?”
“About three in the morning. I parked in the staff parking lot—out of habit, of course. And then I walked up to the street to Lindell's.”
“The Korean grocer?”
Karl wrung his hands. “Yeah. It's the only place in town that sells azuki bean rice balls. Plus, they're open all night.” He stopped wringing his hands long enough to rub both hands against his wrinkled suit trousers.
Fung asked, “Did you enter the City Hall building?”
“No.” Karl shook his head vigorously.
Fung muttered, “Not that the broken security system would have logged your keycard if you had.”
Karl didn't say anything.
Fung asked, “Did you see anyone else in the staff parking lot?”
Karl kept shaking his head. “I saw Annette's Mustang, but that was it.”
Fu
ng stopped typing and turned to look at Karl with a cool expression. “So you knew Annette was alone in the office at three in the morning.”
Karl shoved both hands into his pockets. “I know, I know. It sounds pretty bad, but you have to believe me. Would I come to you voluntarily and change my statement if I... had done something wrong?”
Fung's expression remained impassive. “I don't know. You tell me. Would you?”
Karl huffed and puffed, his face turning a deep, dangerous-looking red. He withdrew one hand from his pocket and thrust it toward Fung.
His sudden movement put Zinnia on red alert—or, to be specific, blue lightning alert. Her fingers crackled with power. She was prepared to let some blue plasma fly when she saw Karl didn't have a weapon in his hand. A crumpled piece of paper left Karl's hand like a tiny bowling ball and landed on Fung's desk.
Fung raised his eyebrows. “What's this?”
“Proof,” Karl said. “My receipt from Lindell's.”
Fung slowly smoothed out the receipt on his desk. “Thank you, Mr. Kormac. I will add this to the file.”
Karl took one step backward, into the hall. “It was the receipt that reminded me. I totally forgot that I went out last night until I saw that in my pocket.”
“Perfectly understandable,” Fung said. “I'm satisfied with your explanation. Is there anything else?”
“Nope.” Karl turned and left.
Zinnia waited until Karl was out of hearing range before she said dryly, “That wasn't suspicious or anything.”
Fung tapped his fingers on his desk and clicked his tongue. “How well do you know your coworkers?”
“That depends. When you spend forty-plus hours a week with people, you get to know them, but only their office side.”
“How long have you been slaving away there, anyway?”
She didn't need to look at a calendar to remind herself. “Exactly one year to the day,” she said.
“Really?” His eyes widened. “That long at one job?”
Wolves of Wisteria Page 4
