Grave Mistake Read online

  But then I reminded myself that he was the professional, that just because I’d decided to play Nancy Drew didn’t mean I had the right to withhold information about something that might be an important piece of evidence.

  “Not in a vision or anything,” I said. “But I was just about to pick up something I saw down in the riverbed when you interrupted me.”

  His brows drew together in a frown I was beginning to recognize. “Why didn’t you say something when we were back there?”

  “Oh, I don’t know…because I’d just fallen in a river? I sort of had other things occupying my mind.”

  For a second, it looked as though he was going to utter some kind of retort. Then he appeared to think better of it, because he said, “What was it?”

  “I don’t know for sure. Something metallic, maybe about this big.” I held up my hand and made a circle with my thumb and forefinger around the size of a silver dollar. “It’s hard to say for sure, because water distorts things.”

  The kettle began to whistle then, so he went to the stove and turned off the gas. Silence for a moment as he poured hot water into the mugs he’d set out earlier, and then he said, “I’ll go back and look in the morning. It’s going to be too dark by the time I get you back to your car. I don’t know how my deputies and I missed something like that, though.”

  “Maybe it was closer to one of the rocks, and then the current in the water shifted it as the day went on,” I suggested.

  “Possibly.” He lifted one of the mugs and handed it to me. I took it from him, glad of the warmth of the heavily glazed stoneware beneath my fingers. The sweats he’d loaned me were warm enough, but the tile floor under my bare feet was cooler than I’d expected it to be. “Anyway,” he went on, “I’ll take a look. And from now on, try to avoid playing amateur detective.”

  “Because the professional ones are doing such a great job?” I responded, and he shot me a pained glance.

  “This isn’t TV,” he told me. “Things don’t get wrapped up neatly in forty-five minutes.”

  “I don’t even watch TV,” I said, which might have been a slight exaggeration but close enough to the truth.

  Apparently, he chose to ignore that comment, because he said, “I know you think you’re trying to help, but you need to let me do my job.”

  “Fine.” I lifted the mug to my lips and took a teeny sip, just because I knew it was still probably too hot to drink anything more than that. “Were you able to find Athene Kappas?”

  His lips thinned. Obviously, asking about the other chief suspect in a murder investigation wasn’t what Calvin Standingbear considered leaving him alone to do his job. And even though I could tell I’d annoyed him again, I had to admit that there was something highly satisfying about standing a few feet away and simply looking at him, taking in the high, hard cheekbones and the lashes that were even more night-dark than his hair…the mouth that was just as chiseled as his nose and chin.

  Had I ever seen a more gorgeous man?

  I doubted it. Or rather, I didn’t think I’d ever seen anyone quite so godlike outside the pages of a magazine or maybe on a movie screen.

  However, there was nothing particularly godlike about the scowl he sent in my direction. “You know I can’t talk to you about that.”

  “I’m not asking you to tell me what she said,” I replied, then allowed myself a slightly larger sip of tea. “I only asked if you were able to find her.”

  He paused, then appeared to decide that minor point wasn’t worth quibbling over. “Yes, I found her. As you told me, she’s staying at an Airbnb here in town. And I let her know that she needed to stick around, same as I told you.”

  Only I wasn’t guilty. Athene didn’t seem to me like the sort of person to fly into a jealous rage and stab someone multiple times, but that didn’t mean much. My work with clients — and my own experiences working through my shadow self, or the darker side of my soul that needed to be understood and embraced as yet another part of myself — told me that everyone had sides to their natures they preferred to keep secret.

  I had to wonder what Calvin Standingbear’s shadows might be.

  “I doubt she was too happy about that.”

  Not even a twitch of his mouth. “I’ll take the Fifth on that one.”

  So, Athene was annoyed that she’d been instructed to cool her heels in tiny Globe for the time being. Well, I couldn’t blame her too much. I’d had the store opening preparations to keep me busy, but otherwise, there wasn’t much to do. A few restaurants, a few shops, some truly spectacular hiking if you were into that sort of thing. The town did boast a very small, very cute movie theater right downtown, but with only four screens to choose from, you’d run out of viewing options pretty fast if you had to spend any amount of time there.

  So much I wanted to ask — whether she’d seemed shocked or sad when she found out about Lucien, what she’d looked like when she got the news, whether she had any suggestions for possible suspects.

  Or maybe I didn’t want to know that last bit. Athene had never been a fan of mine, and I thought it distinctly possible that she’d throw me under the bus if it meant removing suspicion from herself. Not exactly the most charitable position to take, but over the years, I’d learned that people who considered themselves enlightened — or at least spiritual — could be just as petty as anyone else.

  Anyway, it didn’t matter what I wanted to know. Calvin clearly planned to remain tight-lipped, and any attempt on my part to pry important information out of him would meet with failure.

  So, I decided to try another tack. “Can I come with you tomorrow when you go back to the river to look for that object I found?”

  “Now, why would I let you do that?”

  “Because you wouldn’t even know it was there if I hadn’t told you about it,” I said reasonably. His tone irritated me, but I wouldn’t let him see that he’d gotten under my skin.

  He sipped from his oversized mug of tea, dark eyes watching me over the brim. I stared back at him, trying to look as guileless as possible. Actually, I was guileless — I didn’t know what the object was and whether it would turn out to be important to the case or not, but I figured I had just as much right to be there as anyone else.

  “All right,” he replied after a long pause. “But I plan to be out there early. You’ll need to meet me at the river at eight o’clock.”

  Inwardly, I winced. I had never been what you could call a morning person; even a ten o’clock opening time for the store was a bit early for me. However, I vowed to myself that I’d be there to meet Calvin at the river, even if he’d said he was heading out there at dawn.

  “I’ll bring coffee,” I said coolly.

  An eyebrow lifted, but he only said, “I take it black.”

  “Good to know.”

  We drank our tea in silence after that, and about five minutes later, the dryer beeped, signaling that my clothes were dry. He handed them over to me, and I returned to the powder room so I could change out of my borrowed sweats and into my freshly dried T-shirt, jeans, and socks. My boots were still pretty waterlogged, but I pulled them on anyway, knowing I couldn’t possibly walk across the gravel-paved front path barefoot.

  And after that, we headed back out to his Durango, and he drove me to the recreation area parking lot where I’d left my car. A “see you at eight,” and then he was gone.

  A romantic first date, it was not. Or any kind of date. But Calvin had taken me to his house, and I figured that had to signal some kind of progression in our relationship, even if he wouldn’t admit to it.

  Whistling, I backed out of my parking space. Now all I had to do was help him solve this murder, and we’d be on to something.

  9

  Medallions and Musings

  Dragging myself out of bed at just a little past six-thirty took a supreme effort of will, but I told myself that all progress required sacrifice and I needed to suck it up. Archie was not thrilled with me for blasting my hair dryer at the
ungodly hour of seven o’clock on a Sunday morning, and watched with a jaundiced eye as I applied eye liner with far more care than I usually did.

  “Hot date?” he asked sourly.

  I wondered where he’d heard that term. Most of the time, his language was almost too formal, making him sound like a fussy history professor I’d had at Cal State Northridge who always wore tweed jackets, even if it was ninety degrees outside. I’d dropped out after my second year, realizing that college wasn’t my true path, but some things had stuck with me.

  “No,” I said, in tones I intended to be quelling but which merely sounded petulant. “I’m helping Calvin Standingbear with something. That’s all.”

  Archie didn’t appear dissuaded by my remark. He sat up on his haunches and glared at me with baleful golden eyes before saying, “The same Calvin Standingbear who took you to his house last night?”

  Because when I’d gotten home at a little past seven the evening before, Archie had been waiting right in the entry, tail waving in annoyance at my tardiness. I’d been feeding him his dinner every night at precisely six-fifteen, and he’d been more than a little ticked off that I’d made him wait almost forty-five minutes for his bowl of Special Kitty kibble.

  “He took me to his house because it was his fault I fell in the river and got soaked,” I replied crisply. “I already told you that. The rest of it is none of your business.”

  Archie’s tail flicked back and forth in annoyance, and he let out a small hiss, but I noticed that he didn’t reply, only stalked off toward the living room, which offered the best chance of a pool of sunlight to lie in at that time of day.

  Typical.

  But at least I didn’t have to waste any more time arguing with him. I dabbed on some mascara, finished with lipstick, and gave my reflection a careful inspection. It was entirely possible that I was aiming a little above my pay grade by thinking Calvin would be interested in any kind of a relationship with me, but I told myself that faint heart never won hot police chief.

  If nothing else, thinking about how I could flirt with him while not really flirting with him was a good way to distract myself from Lucien’s murder.

  At that hour, Cloud Coffee was packed. Luckily, I’d given myself some extra time, so even though it took nearly fifteen minutes for me to get two coffees and an impulse buy of a cheese danish for Calvin and a croissant for myself, it was still just twenty minutes to eight by the time I headed east on Highway 70 for my rendezvous.

  Instead of parking in the lot, I followed the forest road to the spot where he’d left his San Ramon tribal P.D. SUV the day before. My Volkswagen Beetle didn’t seem too happy about being driven over such rough terrain, but I pulled into the wide spot in the road I remembered without suffering too much damage. A minute later, Calvin appeared and parked next to me.

  I grabbed the carry-out tray with the two coffees and the bag of breakfast pastries, hoping as I did so that I hadn’t screwed up by getting him a cheese danish. For all I knew, he was gluten-free and lactose-intolerant.

  No, wait — he’d refused my offer of a glass of wine at the store opening, but I knew I’d seen him eat some cheese and crackers, so I guessed I was safe on that front.

  “Breakfast!” I said, brandishing the bag.

  He removed the aviator-style sunglasses he was wearing and looked at the white paper sack. “I didn’t ask for breakfast.”

  “No,” I said cheerfully, “but I was hungry, and I figured I might as well get you something. If you don’t want it, I’ll take it back home with me.”

  “What is it?”

  “Cheese danish.”

  His expression brightened noticeably. “My favorite. From Cloud Coffee?”

  “Of course.”

  He took the bag from me and extracted the danish, then accepted the venti black coffee I’d gotten for him as I reflected that sometimes it was a good thing to have intuition about people. It looked as though the breakfast offering might have softened him up a bit.

  For a few minutes, we ate and drank in silence, both of us obviously acknowledging that it was better to get fortified before we headed down to the river. Then he swallowed the rest of his coffee and brushed his free hand on the leg of his khaki uniform pants.

  “Almost ready?”

  I nodded. “Just a bit more cappuccino for me.”

  I drank down the last inch or so of my coffee before stuffing the empty cup in the bag that had held the pastries. Then I held it open so Calvin could dispose of his trash the same way. That matter handled, I headed over to my Beetle and stowed the bag on the floor in front of the passenger seat.

  “Okay, now I’m ready.”

  He didn’t reply, only tilted his head as if to indicate I should follow him through the cottonwood grove and on to the little beach that apparently was the last thing Lucien Dumond had seen before he departed this mortal coil. Dead leaves left over from the previous autumn crunched beneath our feet as we made our way between the trees. It looked very different that morning with the bright sunlight slanting through the greenery overhead, and I found my mood much lighter than it had been, even if our reason for being there was pretty grim.

  We emerged onto the beach, and I took the lead. “Over here,” I said, pausing at the water’s edge and doing my best to point toward the spot where I’d seen the metal object. My boots still hadn’t dried out completely from their dunking the day before, and I really wasn’t looking forward to getting them soaked all over again.

  Calvin, however, didn’t seem to care. Or rather, he’d come prepared; he stopped and rolled up his khaki trousers, revealing a pair of rubber work boots underneath. After shoving his pants into the tops of the boots, he strode out to the spot I’d indicated and looked down into the water.

  “I see it,” he said. Another slight delay as he also rolled up his sleeves — I guessed that the big, sporty watch he wore had to be waterproof, or at least water-resistant — slipped on a latex glove, and then reached down into the water.

  I watched, holding my breath, as he scrabbled around in the mud and rocks at the bottom of the river. It was just deep enough that, even with his sleeves rolled up, he still splashed the edges of the fabric.

  But then he pulled his arm out of the water and held it out, hand open. Lying against his glove-covered palm was a round silver medallion, one that was engraved with a stylized half moon on one half and a tree with spreading branches on the other.

  My breath sucked in, and Calvin gave me a questioning glance.

  “You recognize this?”

  I nodded. “It’s the symbol of GLANG.”

  “What’s GLANG?”

  “Athene didn’t tell you?”

  “It didn’t come up.”

  All right, then. Still, I wasn’t a member, and whatever suspicious activity the necromancers’ guild might have been involved in, it wasn’t my problem. “It stands for ‘Greater Los Angeles Necromancers’ Guild.’”

  “Necro — ” Calvin broke off there, expression dubious. “You’re joking, right?”

  “Oh, it’s no joke,” I said. “They’re part of the reason why I ended up in Globe. I mean, Lucien was most of the reason, but he wouldn’t have been nearly as scary if he didn’t have thirty other sorcerers as backup.”

  Looking grim, Calvin splashed his way back to shore. Since I hadn’t actually ventured out into the water, all I had to do was take a couple of steps to be standing on dry land. He waited for me there, the silver medallion gleaming in his hand. “He threatened you?”

  “He made it pretty obvious that he didn’t like any competition. Not that I do the sort of magic that GLANG dabbles in,” I added hastily. The last thing I wanted was for Calvin to think I’d been brewing eye of newt and toe of frog or something. “But he didn’t like that I was taking clients away from him. Or at least, he thought I was poaching clients. I really wasn’t, but Lucien was never the type of person to allow reality to interfere with his view of the universe.”

  “And yet he
came all the way here to ask you to come back.”

  “Because he did the math in his head and decided it would be better for him — and GLANG — if I was working for them. Too bad I’ve never been much of a joiner.”

  Calvin absorbed this bit of information in silence. I’d noticed that about him; he wasn’t afraid to be quiet and think something through before he commented on it. I had to say, it was a nice change of pace from a lot of the guys in L.A. I’d known, the ones who barely came up for air because they were so busy talking your head off about how wonderful they were.

  Hefting the medallion in his palm, he asked, “Did everyone in GLANG have one of these?”

  Good question. I racked my brain, trying to recall any of my interactions with the members of the guild. Lucien liked to wear bracelets and earrings and rings, but the only pendant I’d ever seen hanging from his neck had been a heavy silver version of the Scorpio symbol. He was so proud of being a double Scorpio.

  And the couple of times I’d been to his house in Encino, I’d seen a few more of the GLANG-sters, as I sometimes thought of Lucien’s followers, but I couldn’t recall if any of them had been wearing a pendant similar to the one Calvin held now. They’d all had on black clothing, loose pants and band-collared shirts for the men, loose but low-cut tank-style dresses for the women. If they’d been wearing any kind of jewelry around their necks, you’d think I would have noticed.

  Come to think of it….

  “The only person I ever saw wearing one was Athene Kappas,” I said, and Calvin gave a nod. Not a satisfied one, exactly, but as if that piece of information corroborated what he’d already suspected. Silently, he took a small baggie out of his pants pocket — did he have an inexhaustible supply of them in there? — and then dropped the medallion inside. That task handled, he put the baggie with its piece of evidence in his pocket before removing the latex glove he wore.

  “I’ll take this back to the station and check it for fingerprints. Probably a long shot because of it being in the water overnight, but you never know.”