Hex to Pay

by Stevie Day

  With that, he nodded and followed her farther inside.

  4

  Once inside her office, Alice pointed her potential client toward one of the two chairs opposite her desk. “Why don’t you sit down?” she asked. He sat, and Alice chose to take the seat next to him rather than her own behind the desk. “What can I do for you?”

  “Are you the PI?” he asked while nervously trying to smooth out the wrinkles on his shorts.

  “Yes, sir. Licensed and all that good stuff.”

  He looked up. “Okay. Alice, right?”

  She looked directly into his gaze. “That’s right. Alice Munroe.”

  “Barry Lombardi.” He offered her his clammy hand.

  She shook it. “Mr. Lombardi. A pleasure to meet you.”

  “Barry, please,” he said softly.

  Alice nodded. “Barry.”

  “I heard you’re really good.” His nervous hands returned to their impossible mission of smoothing out his wrinkled shorts.

  Alice smiled. “Thank you. I do my best.” She watched his nervous display.

  His hands suddenly froze as he enthusiastically announced, “You found my mom’s cat years ago.”

  “Oh! Cool. I’ve found a lot of pets. I’m glad I could reunite them. What was—”

  “My wife was murdered,” he blurted out. “Murdered!” His dark eyes glared, tears welling within them.

  Alice flinched and sat back in her chair. She hadn’t expected anything like that to come out of his mouth.

  Alice, though generally a humble person, was good. And she knew it. But the cases she specialized in were more on the level of finding lost items, or tracking down little pugs lost in the woods. Sure, she helped pay the bills by taking on standard things like taking photos of cheating spouses and exposing low level insurance frauds. But murder? That wasn’t a common occurrence in her small town. Was she up for a case like that?

  “Oh gosh, Mr. Lombardi,” she started.

  “Barry,” he breathed, relaxing.

  “Right, Barry, sorry. I’m sorry to hear about your wife, but I’m… I mean, I’m not sure…” Her eyes darted around the room as she grasped desperately for the right words to say.

  He lifted his head in confusion. “What?”

  “It’s just… I’d love to help you, but…” She trailed off again. She ran her hand through her long dirty blonde hair and began unconsciously twirling a lock of it around her finger.

  For the first time Barry seemed a little perturbed. “What?” he repeated. “You’re a private eye, right? A detective?”

  “Yes, yes, of course. It’s just that I…” She took a deep breath and collected herself. This stammering was unprofessional, and she didn’t like it. She looked him in the eyes. “You took me by surprise, that’s all.”

  “I see,” he said. “Have you ever investigated something like a murder before?”

  She felt no reason to lie. “No. No, I haven’t. I’ve had some serious cases, some pretty important stuff, for sure. But most of my day-to-day cases are actually very dull and mostly grunt work.”

  “So you’re saying you won’t help me?” He started tensing up again.

  Alice put up her hand and shook her head. “No, not at all. Like I said, you just caught me by surprise.”

  “Then you will help?” His dark eyes seemed to soften with hope.

  “Let’s slow down just a bit,” she said. “Why don’t you give me some background first and we’ll go from there.”

  Barry’s eyes fixated on a photo on Alice’s wall, one of a 50s car at an old-timey gas station. After a few moments, he said, “There’s not much to tell. She was home, working at her desk. I went to the store for no more than a half hour and when I got back, she was dead.”

  “Dead how?”

  “Her face was on the keyboard.” His eyes glazed over and he looked blankly at the wall behind Alice. “You know the thing I’ll never forget? I looked at her, face down, and before I could react, I just stared at her monitor. You know what it said?”

  “No, Barry,” Alice responded softly. “What did it say?”

  “J,” he said. “Just rows and rows of the letter J. It was still going. Js across the screen.”

  Alice put her hand over her mouth, imagining the scene. How terrible it must’ve been for him. She remained silent, waiting patiently for Barry to continue.

  “I loved her, Alice,” Barry continued. “I loved her more than you can imagine.”

  Alice had questions, but she let there be a few moments of silence between them. Alice was an empathetic person. Sometimes overly so. She had never been married, never even close, but she had loved before. And she had lost someone important to her. It wasn’t hard for her to put herself in his place.

  She remained quiet, letting him continue the conversation at his own pace.

  After about a minute had passed, Alice felt he was ready for some more questions.

  “What was the cause of death, Barry?”

  “Natural causes,” he scoffed. He made a tsk sound and rolled his eyes. “Autopsy said it was a heart attack. That there was some ‘pre-existing condition’ that would’ve been almost impossible to detect. Thirty years old and a heart attack? Come on.”

  “Had she been having trouble with her heart?”

  “That’s the thing,” he said. “She was in great shape! She ran every day, sometimes did half marathons. She’d just been to the doctor three months ago for a physical. Nothing. No ‘pre-existing condition’ then. And yet… Heart attack.” He shook his head.

  “These things can be sneaky, though,” Alice tried.

  His eyes darted to her face. “Listen, I know my wife. And I know in my gut this was no heart attack. I believe it with every fiber of my being.”

  Alice nodded. It wasn’t necessary to believe a client was right in order to take their case. And in a case like this one, it wouldn’t be a matter of accepting a lost cause just for the money. If she did take the case and found nothing but a natural death, maybe she could bring peace and closure for this man.

  “Okay,” she continued. “What about the police? Did they get involved at all? Did you go to them and say you suspected murder?”

  “Of course,” he said. “Couldn’t get in to see Sheriff Brady. But those bumbling moron twins he calls deputies were no help at all.”

  Alice cringed at this. Those “bumbling morons” were friends of hers. Granted, they could come across as a little dense sometimes. But they were as honest as they came.

  “What’d they say?” she asked.

  “They bought into the autopsy. Said there was nothing to investigate.” He leaned back in his chair.

  “And what do you think happened? If she died at her desk at home—”

  “Poison,” he said.

  “Poison?” she asked. “I mean, could someone have just sneaked in that quickly, poisoned her, and left?”

  He squirmed a little in his chair. “I don’t know. I did some Internet searches and people seem to think it’s all but impossible to kill someone with poison nowadays and not have it detected. But look at where we live. Look how small this town is and how small our police force is and how small-time our medical examiner is. They said they ran a toxicology report, but how thorough would they be if they had already come to the conclusion that it was a heart attack?”

  Alice nodded. “Maybe. Look, I’m not being dismissive of the idea, but it does seem a bit far-fetched.”

  “Well, maybe it wasn’t poison, then. Maybe there’s something everyone is missing. Like I’ve been trying to explain, it’s not like anybody has put even the smallest amount of effort into an investigation here.”

  “I don’t know, Barry…”

  He leaned forward and looked into her eyes pleadingly. “Can you just check? I mean, I can pay you. It’s your job, right? And there’s nobody else anywhere near here. You’re the only gig in town. I have some savings and Janet did have an insurance policy that will come in eventually. I can pay�
�”

  “Easy, Barry,” Alice interrupted. “If I take the case, I won’t be looking for anything crazy. Just the standard rate, regular expenses, that sort of thing. I wouldn’t take advantage of you.”

  “Please, Alice. Please find who killed my wife.”

  That was that, then. She had no argument left to make. Her trepidation was clear to both of them, and Mr. Lombardi, her client, didn’t care. In the end, it boiled down to the simple fact that he was a paying customer who wanted to hire her to perform an investigation. Which was her job. And with this case being much bigger than any she had taken on before, she certainly wasn’t going to turn it down.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll take your case.”

  Barry sat back in his chair, closed his eyes and exhaled deeply. She’d half expected him to hug her gratefully, he had been so filled with passion. Instead, he seemed to melt back into the exhausted and sad man who’d first come through the door moments earlier.

  Alice cleared her throat, then headed to her desk. “I’m going to need some information. First, did she have any enemies? Anyone who might want her dead?”

  “No, nobody hated Janet. I’m not going to try to paint a sunny picture of perfection. But as far as enemies who might want to kill her? Nobody I can think of. Having said that,” he continued, “I would start at the real estate office where she worked. She sold houses and there were a couple of sketchy guys there. Dr. Dalton’s Real Estate.”

  “Oh, okay.” Alice grabbed a pen and a fresh little notebook from her notebook reserve in her bottom drawer. “I’ve seen their signs everywhere.”

  “Dr. Dalton—”

  “Wait, is he a real doctor?” Alice interrupted.

  Barry laughed. “Not at all. He’s kind of a douche. Janet used to joke that he found and printed out an honorary doctorate from some made up Internet college and started calling himself ‘Doctor’ because he thought it sounded impressive.”

  “Wow. I can’t wait to meet this guy…”

  “It’s a small operation. Other than Janet, there’s only two other salespeople. Able Johnstone and Barbara Baker.”

  “Okay, good. And did any of them give Janet a hard time?”

  “Nothing specific. No outright harassment or abuse. She’d come home from time to time upset because Dalton had been particularly harsh, but we’ve all had bad bosses, right?”

  Alice nodded and pressed on. “Anything going on with the co-workers?”

  Barry paused for a second, seeming to consider. “No,” he said finally. “Like I said, they were a little sketchy, especially Able, but Janet never spoke of anything that might lead to murder.”

  “Sketchy how?”

  “Hard to describe,” Barry said. “You know the word ‘smarmy’?” She nodded. “Yeah, that’s him.”

  Alice made more notes. “Okay. And is there anyone you suspect in particular?”

  “There’s really not. I wish I could say for sure and point my finger and say ‘that guy killed my wife,’ but I really don’t know.”

  “What else did she do? When you were talking about her health situation, you mentioned she ran half marathons. Was that an organized thing, or…?”

  “She had a couple of girlfriends she ran with, but it was mostly on her own. She didn’t belong to any… I don’t know… ‘causes’ or anything. No organizations. She wasn’t much of a joiner.”

  “Okay,” Alice said. “Her laptop and phone, then? Can I have those?”

  “What?” Barry asked, growing suddenly stiff.

  “Not to keep or anything. But there might be stuff on there, clues.”

  “No,” he said. “I mean, I looked. She was very open with me. We shared everything, no secrets. I’d even use her laptop from time to time, so it’s not like she was keeping things from me.”

  “Still,” Alice said. “For the sake of thoroughness and covering all my bases, I’d love to be able to look at them. There might be something that’s ordinary to you that jumps out as strange to me.”

  Barry was quiet for a few seconds. “Let me just give that a little thought. Is that okay?”

  “Sure,” she said. It was a big ask, she knew. So many people kept so much personal information on their personal devices. Who knew what else might be laid bare once Alice started down that rabbit hole? Still, in a case like this, all the answers she might need could be stored on one of them. Maybe even in plain sight.

  “I think that’s enough for now,” she said. “I’m going to have more questions as we go, I’m sure. Can you leave me your phone number, address, and email?”

  “Of course.”

  Alice passed over her little notebook and a pen. Barry jotted down the pertinent information, then gave them back to her.

  “I’ll email you my rates and I’ll keep track of all expenses, receipts, stuff like that,” she said. “There’s no need to worry, though. I use a sliding scale, and if there are any issues, I’m sure we can come to a figure that matches your budget.”

  “Like I said earlier,” Barry started, “the money isn’t important. Finding my wife’s killer is.”

  “Of course. I understand.” She placed the notebook on her desk.

  He got up and offered his hand. Alice took it. It was a gentle handshake, nothing macho about it, and it made Alice feel even more sympathy for this man and what he was obviously going through.

  “I’ll be in touch, Barry.”

  “Thank you, Alice,” he said, before he turned and left.

  Once he was out of sight of her front window, she slumped down in her chair and let her arms fall limp at her sides. A murder investigation. Her first. She took the idea very seriously, but she couldn’t help feeling a certain level of excitement at the prospect of tracking down a killer.

  Still, from everything she’d heard so far, her early suspicion was that this was exactly what everybody but Barry was saying it was: a natural death. There was little to nothing to go on. Just the gut feeling of a grieving man who recently lost the love of his life.

  But even if there had been no murder, she was determined to conduct an honest and thorough investigation. She owed Barry that much. It was what all her clients deserved and always received.

  The front door swung open one more time and Danny walked in with two small brown bags in his hands.

  “Did I just see that guy leave here?” he asked. Alice moved over to him and grabbed the bag she suspected contained her donuts out of his hand, saying, “Yoink!” as she did. Danny would always laugh when she did that, but this time he remained stoic, more concerned about the man who had just left her office.

  Barry did have a dark and sad aura about him, so she understood Danny’s concern.

  “Yeah,” she finally answered. “That guy’s my new case.”

  Danny let out a breath. “Oh, good. What kind of case?”

  “Brace for it, Danny. It’s my first ever… murder case.”

  Danny’s mouth dropped open, and it took him a moment to process her words. “Th-that’s dangerous, isn’t it? If there’s a murder, that means there’s a murderer, and if they haven’t been caught yet…”

  Alice knew what he was suggesting—and he wasn’t wrong. There was an element of risk and danger when it came to murder cases, far more than any other type of investigation case. But what he didn’t know was that her magic would protect her.

  It always had.

  “Don’t worry, Danny,” she said with a knowing smile. “I have my ways.”

  5

  Alice spent the morning doing a simple background on her new case. She currently had no other cases going, which happened from time to time. Other times she’d be in the middle of three or four cases at once. Though she opened the office every morning at 9am, the nature of her business meant she never really kept 9-5 hours. She worked when the work needed to be done and when she was light on cases, she would give more of her time to the animal shelter.

  Leaning back in her big office chair, her laptop propped up on her lap,
she first read Janet Lombardi’s obituary. She then pulled up a police and fire report referring to the 911 call from the Lombardi household the night of her death.

  She visited Janet and Barry’s Facebook pages, checked out posts they made, friends they had, pages they’d liked, and so on. She found nothing out of the ordinary, nothing to suggest anything besides normal lives. She knew there had to be stories there; everyone had stories. But she was comfortable in the knowledge and experience that these were first steps, research, and she wasn’t likely to find an “aha” moment in the first hours of her investigation. She would dig deeper later as more paths unfolded in front of her.

  Right about noon, lunchtime, she decided to pay a visit to her friends at the police station. On her short drive there, she passed by a familiar scene: someone selling a pound of shrimp for a few bucks, right out the back of their van.

  To outsiders, this might have been an odd sight. But Alice saw this sort of thing every day. She lived in New Shrimpton, after all. The amount of shrimp found on this town’s shores could be considered magical.

  And Alice wasn’t entirely sure magic wasn’t involved.

  Although the town of New Shrimpton was actually quite large from a square mile standpoint, it wasn’t densely populated and thus retained a small town quality. The entire police force was only about a dozen strong and that included covering all shifts. For the most part, it was big enough to handle the usual minor issues.

  The town name itself… New Shrimpton? That name had started off as a joke until it was made official after one particularly rambunctious night of drinking at Town Hall.

  The original town name hadn’t been much better: Coastown. Apparently the founders of Coastown weren’t exactly the most imaginative bunch. So when, over the course of two or three years, the waters around Coastown had inexplicably become thick with shrimp, someone had nominated “Shrimpton” as the new town name at a town council meeting.

  Someone had seconded the motion but added on the “New.” Much laughter had ensued and from all accounts that town council meeting had turned into a raucous good time, the likes of which had rarely been seen in any such town council meeting. And by the end of the meeting, the council—who was also possibly drunk—had passed the name change.