Grave Mistake Page 15

  “I’ll take a quick look at the vehicle.” Calvin’s voice was brisk, no-nonsense, although he sounded friendly enough as he directed his next words to Travis. “You need a lift home, Travis?”

  “If you could,” the other man said. From his obvious relief, I could tell he was much happier getting a lift from Calvin than from Chief Lewis.

  Not that I could blame him.

  “Sure thing,” Calvin said, and clapped Travis on the shoulder. “Just give me a few minutes, and then I’ll get you out of here.”

  Travis shot him a relieved glance, then headed over to a large boulder on the side of the highway. He leaned up against it, hands jammed in his pockets, and stared, mouth drooping, at the wreckage of his vehicle.

  Calvin walked over to me and said in an undertone, “You getting anything from all this?”

  “You mean like what I felt down by the river?” I replied in a similar murmur.

  He nodded. Across the way, Chief Lewis stared at us with narrowed eyes, but then his shoulders lifted, and he walked back over to his deputy, who’d been standing guard by the gurney next to an EMT the whole time. They shared a few words, and then the EMT and the deputy hefted the gurney into the back of the ambulance.

  The slam of its doors seemed far too loud, and I jumped. Calvin gave me a sympathetic glance.

  “Hell of a first date.”

  “Is that what it was?”

  A corner of his mouth lifted slightly. “Maybe. Can you come with me to Travis’s car?”

  “Sure.”

  I told myself I shouldn’t be feeling so happy, not when Athene Kappas lay dead a few yards away from me in the back of an ambulance. And maybe “happy” wasn’t even the correct word for the way I felt right then.

  Excited…hopeful.

  Calvin had called our dinner a date, not me.

  We walked over to the wreckage of Travis’s Subaru. It had been pushed mostly onto the shoulder; flares surrounded it, letting passing motorists know to give the spot a wide berth. Not that there was probably much traffic coming and going on Highway 60 on a Sunday night, thankfully.

  The car wasn’t brand-new, but it looked as though Travis did a good job of maintaining it, because the paint that wasn’t scratched and scraped looked clean, and the tires appeared fairly new as well. I felt a stab of pity for the poor thing ending up like this, because even my unpracticed eyes could tell the frame had been bent and the vehicle was totaled.

  I didn’t think I made any kind of sound, but Calvin must have picked up something because he said, “Travis’s insurance will take care of most of it. He had to have it fully insured to be driving for Uber.”

  “What about the deductible?” Somehow, I doubted Travis had an extra thousand bucks — or even five hundred — lying around to cover that sort of expense.

  Calvin looked as though he wanted to reach out and give me a reassuring pat on the arm. Since we had something of an audience — Chief Lewis and his deputy still loitered on the scene, probably waiting for the tow truck to arrive — he just said, “Then Josie will organize some kind of a fundraiser. They do that in Globe. Take care of their own, I mean.”

  Even though I was new to town and probably wouldn’t be classified as one of “their own”…at least not yet…I couldn’t help but be relieved by Calvin’s words. It felt good to be in a place where people looked out for each other.

  “That’s good to hear,” I said.

  “Not much like L.A., I’m guessing.”

  “Not a lot, no.” It wasn’t that people didn’t try to look out for one another when they could, but just being neighbors usually wasn’t enough of an incentive to get involved the way it obviously was in this particular small town.

  Far down the highway appeared a set of flashing lights, getting closer. Calvin glanced over at them and frowned.

  “The tow truck,” he said briefly. “We need to get on this.”

  The way he said “we” heartened me, although at the same time, I couldn’t help experiencing just a twinge of worry. It seemed as if he now wanted to include me as an informal member of his team.

  I had to hope I wouldn’t disappoint him.

  As he walked around the vehicle, snapping a series of images with his phone, I stayed off to one side. The strobing lights from the ambulance and the various cop cars didn’t do much to help my concentration, although I tried to ignore them as best I could.

  I had to focus.

  At first, I didn’t feel anything at all, except a certain jangly energy I guessed came from Calvin and probably Travis, who stood only a few yards away from us. Beneath that, though, there came a dark, creeping sensation, sort of like the world’s worst goosebumps marching a parade down my spine.

  Without thinking, I stepped forward and placed a hand on the Subaru’s mangled bumper. A shock of cold went up my arm, and I gasped and jumped back.

  Immediately, Calvin looked over at me, phone idle in his hand. “You okay, Selena?”

  I shook my head. “No,” I said, then hurriedly added as he began to frown, “I mean, I’m fine. But there’s something very wrong here. I don’t practice this kind of thing, so I don’t know exactly what went down with the car, but it definitely feels as if it was tampered with somehow.”

  “‘Tampered with’?” he repeated. “You mean like cutting the brake lines or something?”

  “Worse than that,” I told him. “Dark magic…a hex, I guess.”

  Although his expression didn’t change, I could almost feel the way his body stiffened. He might have said he was willing to believe in all sorts of things, but when I came right out and started talking about hexes and dark magic, that was a whole other story.

  To my relief, though, he didn’t try to contradict me. “You’re sure?”

  “‘Sure’ is a strong word,” I said. “Magic isn’t science. It’s kind of the antithesis of science. All I can do is tell you how it feels to me.”

  “Your instincts have been pretty good so far.”

  Maybe. If they’d been really good, I would have sensed a dark cloud hanging over Athene…I would have had the foresight to tell her that driving off with Travis was a really bad idea.

  Except if there actually was a hex on his car, that meant someone had been determined to get her no matter what the collateral damage. And if that was really the case, then it probably didn’t matter which way she’d tried to get out of town…any attempt at leaving would have been doomed to failure.

  The chill that went over me right then didn’t have much to do with the dark magic I’d sensed on Travis’s Subaru…or the cold night air. The days had started to warm, but Globe still got downright chilly overnight.

  Who would want Athene Kappas dead so badly, it didn’t matter who else got in the way?

  Some people might have argued that because she worked so closely with Lucien, his enemies were her enemies. For all I knew, that was the simple truth. But….

  Calvin stepped closer to me as he slipped his phone back into his pocket. His voice was calm as he said, “You don’t have to try to solve this tonight. We need to get Travis home.”

  “What if the killer is already moving on to his next victim?” I asked. “What if that next victim is me?”

  For a moment, he didn’t reply, only stared at the crumpled Subaru with unreadable dark eyes. Then he replied, “I don’t think that’s too likely. Athene was very closely connected to Lucien Dumond. Horrible as her death is, it at least makes some sense when you look at the situation that way. You’ve made it pretty clear you didn’t want anything to do with him, so I don’t know why someone would target you.”

  I wanted to believe him. He sounded so calm, so plausible. I told myself that I was understandably freaked out. After all, I’d never been connected to a murder before, let alone multiple murders. And I’d talked to Athene earlier that day. She’d seemed shaken but otherwise all right. It was hard to believe she was gone.

  And yes, I believed — well, actually, I knew, thanks to commun
icating with my departed grandmother — that death on this plane, in this life, wasn’t the end. Athene had moved on. Truly moved on, I thought, since I hadn’t felt a hint of her presence at the accident scene. No lingering dregs of fear and pain like there had been down by the San Ramon River. Her end might have been a violent one, but it hadn’t consigned her to an eternity of haunting this lonely stretch of Highway 60.

  “You’re probably right,” I said. “Let’s take Travis home.”

  Travis lived in a shabby little bungalow on one of Globe’s hillier streets, in a neighborhood that reminded me somehow of San Francisco — probably because of the steep hillsides and the collection of last turn-of-the-century homes that clustered there. Of course, in San Francisco, even Travis’s tiny house would have been worth more than a million, while I doubted in Globe it would go for a tenth of that.

  He got out of the Durango’s back seat, thanked Calvin, and headed up the front walk, looking pretty spry for someone whose car had just flipped a few times. Then again, he was probably hurrying so he could get inside and smoke a bowl for his aches and pains. If I’d been in his shoes, I would’ve been thinking the same thing.

  Calvin pointed the SUV back toward downtown so he could take me home. As he pulled up next to my Volkswagen at the back of the store, he said, “You sure you’re going to be all right?”

  Part of me wanted to say no, I wouldn’t, just to see whether he’d offer to sleep on my couch and keep watch all night. But I held my tongue. I didn’t want to make him think I couldn’t look after myself…even as I wondered whether I would be up to the task.

  He walked me to the back door and watched as I let myself in, but his manner seemed almost oddly formal. Most likely, he’d realized it was the wine talking earlier and nothing more, and was now probably grateful for the phone call that had interrupted him before he did something really stupid.

  “Call me if you see or hear anything that seems off,” he said.

  “It’ll be fine,” I replied, even as I wondered if it really would be. Two people dead in the span of forty-eight hours. Who else would be next?

  His mouth tightened. “I hope so. But I mean it. Don’t hesitate — just call if you feel even a little weird about something.”

  I wanted to tell him that I was already feeling pretty weird. But hinkiness wasn’t enough of an excuse to ask him to stay and babysit me, so I just nodded. However, I couldn’t quite keep myself from slanting a sideways glance up at him as I asked, “Shouldn’t I be calling Globe P.D. if something really does go down? This isn’t even your jurisdiction.”

  If anything, his lips compressed even further. “I’m not sure the Barney Fifes are up to this sort of thing.”

  Despite everything, I couldn’t help chuckling. Globe’s deputies were probably okay if called on to handle a traffic accident or a burglary or maybe even a domestic dispute, but I had to admit that they weren’t quite up to the task of handling some kind of supernatural serial murderer.

  If that was even what we were up against. I almost wanted to tell myself that I’d been imagining things back at the accident scene, that the feelings of cold and dread I’d experienced were my own fear and unease talking, but I couldn’t quite convince myself of that. Something strange was definitely going on, even if I couldn’t quite identify what it might be.

  “You have a point,” I said lightly. “Okay, I’ll call. But I’m sure everything will be quiet. Like you said, I’m only tangentially connected to all this.”

  Calvin nodded. “Right. Take care — and turn on your alarm system.”

  Because of course he’d noticed it when he came over for dinner. Alison Carruthers, the woman who’d renovated the property, had installed the alarm, although at the time, I’d found myself wondering if such measures were really necessary in sleepy little Globe. Now, though, I was damn glad of having a security system, even if I didn’t know for sure how much good it would do to ward off hexes and dark magic.

  “I will.” I paused, then said, “Thanks for taking me along with you. I don’t think Chief Lewis was too thrilled about it, though.”

  The grim look left Calvin’s mouth, and he actually appeared halfway amused. “Maybe someday I’ll tell you how much I don’t care about Chief Lewis’s opinion.”

  I couldn’t help smiling. “Good to know — and good night.”

  Still wearing that smile, I let myself in, then locked the door behind me and engaged the alarm system. I hadn’t turned it on when we left, mostly because Calvin and I had been in such a hurry.

  It actually did give me a spurious sense of safety, although that sense only lasted until I heard Calvin’s SUV backing away from the building and moving down the alleyway that separated my place from the empty lot behind it. My smile disappeared as well.

  Damn, I really wished I hadn’t been such a coward about asking him to stay.

  I mounted the stairs to find Archie sitting in the entry of my apartment, tail flicking back and forth in irritation. “Are you going to come and go at such odd hours every time that man visits you?”

  Considering this was only the second time Calvin had come over to my apartment, I thought Archie was being a bit melodramatic. “I don’t know,” I said. “But a woman I know died in a car accident tonight, so I’d appreciate you showing a little respect.”

  For Archie, he looked almost ashamed. Or at least, he ducked his head and pretended to rub it against his foreleg, as if he didn’t quite know how to react to such a statement. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  I doubt it, I thought, but I decided it was better not to push things. If nothing else, he was pretending to be shamefaced, and I figured that was a start. As for the rest….

  “You’re actually lucky we had to go out,” I remarked. “Otherwise, I don’t know where things might have been headed.”

  That vague allusion was enough to make his eyes flare wide in alarm. “You wouldn’t.”

  “This is my house, Archie,” I told him. “If I want to do the horizontal hokey-pokey with the world’s hottest chief of police, that’s my prerogative. You can go hide under the dining room table or something while we’re doing the deed.”

  His tail whipped back and forth. “Just let me out before you get started,” he shot back. “I’ll make sure to stay far, far away.”

  “It’s a deal,” I said. “Anything else? It’s late, and I’m tired.”

  “No,” he replied. “I think that is all.”

  “Good.”

  Without waiting to see if he wanted to respond, I headed into the bedroom and shut the door, glad that the apartment had been renovated with an en suite bathroom so I wouldn’t have to emerge again that night. I kicked off my shoes and removed my jewelry, placing it in the little handmade ceramic dish I’d bought at a street fair in Santa Monica years ago.

  I hadn’t been lying to Archie when I’d said I was tired. Exhausted, actually, even though I realized when I glanced over at the clock on my bedside table that it really wasn’t all that late. A little past ten, no more, and I often stayed up past midnight, especially if I needed to perform a moon ritual or set out my crystals to recharge at a particular time.

  But the moon was waning, and I didn’t have plans for any more rituals until the new moon on April twenty-second, not quite two weeks away.

  Problem was, when I laid my head on the pillows and closed my eyes, my brain didn’t seem to have gotten the memo that my body was ready to get some rest. Instead, my thoughts kept racing, trying to find patterns where none seemed to have yet emerged.

  I didn’t find it too hard to believe that Lucien had driven someone to murder, but why Athene? Was this unknown killer a person who thought himself so wronged by the former head of GLANG that he couldn’t be content with just getting rid of the man in charge, but had to murder Lucien’s right-hand woman as well?

  And all right, I knew I was mentally assigning a gender to this unknown killer when no one knew who he — or she — really was. I supposed the murders could
have been committed by a woman, but I didn’t think so. My instincts were telling me otherwise.

  Great. So now I’d narrowed the suspect down to a little less than half the planet’s population.

  I rolled over on my side and stared moodily at the faint glow of the streetlights beyond the blinds. In the past, the light had never bothered me, because it certainly wasn’t bright enough to really disturb my sleep. That night, though, it seemed as if not much was required to keep me awake.

  All right. I told my brain that a tired and cranky witch wasn’t an effective witch, but those inner admonitions didn’t seem to help much. Letting out a sigh, I shifted onto my back again, figuring I usually fell asleep that way, so I might as well increase the odds.

  And what was going on with Violet Clarke? I couldn’t imagine her as a cold-blooded killer — especially not one as powerful as the magical residue at the crash site seemed to indicate — but she wasn’t exactly acting like an innocent party, either. I wished I’d pressed Athene to tell me more about what Violet had said when she showed up in Globe. But since the subject had obviously been a sore one, I’d decided to let it go…and now I had very little to work with.

  As I stared up at the ceiling, I tried to catalog the other magical practitioners in the greater Los Angeles area, doing my best to determine whether any of them might be behind this whole mess. None of them seemed powerful enough, though — or motivated enough. I wouldn’t say that any of us had really liked Lucien, but neither had we harbored the kind of animus that would result in murder. Pretty much everyone — myself included — had done what we could to stay out of his orbit.

  You don’t have to solve this tonight, I told myself, my inner voice doing its best to sound reassuring.

  I wasn’t reassured, though.

  Who knew what might happen while I was asleep?

  14