The halloween haunting, p.13
The Halloween Haunting, page 13
Right. Mandy. This should be fun.
“Don’t tell me. She went to Nebraska for her recent trip.” Alex looked at Bradley, who nodded. Immediately, Bradley’s fingers started to fly.
“I was talking with her earlier today. She didn’t say where she’d gone, but I remember it being in the Midwest. That’s where Nebraska is, right?” I knew it was. And I hated to think cute, perky water sprite Mandy had anything at all to do with recent events.
“Amanda Dryer, age twenty-three, booked from Austin to Omaha, returning four days later.” Bradley looked up from his computer. “She missed her return flight and had to take a later one.”
“Something about our conversation had been off.” I tried to remember what it was but couldn’t pinpoint a specific detail. “She mentioned parties and hot boys and booze, but that was about it.”
“No. That’s not right.” Bradley looked confused. “Mandy likes girls.”
I considered Mandy and Alex’s relationship, the crush I’d always assumed she had on Alex. Hm. Had someone been viewing the world through her own Alex-infatuated glasses? Maybe I had. Or maybe Bradley didn’t really get people and hadn’t a clue who Mandy liked to date or was attracted to.
“I’m sure. She told me.” Bradley looked so certain. He must have seen the speculative gleam in my eyes, because he added, “I didn’t ask her out. She’s not my type.”
Not what I’d been thinking. Nope. Not at all.
Alex elbowed me, and I realized my mouth was open. But…Bradley had a type? Bradley dated? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what Bradley’s type was. Not that I suspected him of bad taste; I simply had difficulty grasping the idea of him dating anyone.
“Mandy’s gay,” Alex confirmed. “Any chance you misunderstood?”
“The context was clear,” I said. “She made it sound like she met up with her cousins and partied like it was spring break—and mentioned hot men.”
Bradley looked up from his computer. “I found two cousins, Bethany and Bridget. Both live in Iowa.” After a few clicks, he added, “Far western Iowa.”
“I’d fly into Omaha if I was traveling to western Iowa,” Alex said after his gaze settled on Cornelius. “Let me call the cousins and see if she showed up, at least, before we start jumping to conclusions.”
Cornelius looked grim, and Alex was freaking me out a bit. He took a slip of paper from Bradley and, after a quick glance at it, placed a call. He walked out in the hall, so I didn’t hear what he said to Mandy’s cousin.
“Why would Mandy lie? Hasn’t she worked here for ages? You guys trust her, right?” Except I knew the answer. Mandy practically ran Alex’s life. Of course he trusted her.
“We don’t think that she lied, Ms. Andrews.” Cornelius’s nostrils pinched as if a foul stench had flooded the room. “We suspect that she’s had false memories implanted.”
If ghosts sucking energy without asking achieved a four or a five on the icky scale, then implanted memories were an eleven. Having someone cut out things you shouldn’t know from your mind, that was a terrible thing. One that Alex and I had, once upon a time, done our best to prevent from happening to Bradley. Even now, I was hoping to keep Gabe’s memories of the Society from that fate. But shoving things into someone’s head? That seemed worse to me.
Alex came back in much too quickly. I had a bad feeling the conversation hadn’t gone well.
“Please, please tell me that shoving fake memories in someone’s head is not legal here.” I was clinging to the notion that the Society had redeeming qualities, and that was especially difficult after our last case. The Society frequently operated in a moral gray area, but this was one of those times when there was a right answer and a wrong answer.
Cornelius took a breath. “Legality within the Society is a complex issue.”
“Give it a rest, Cornelius,” Alex said sharply, and I couldn’t help a double take. That was not how he usually talked to his boss. He turned to me. “The witches we use to pull out memories do their best to be precise, and they aren’t sanctioned to implant false memories except in extreme situations. Anyone doing so in Austin would face serious censure and likely retaliation.”
I felt slightly mollified by Alex’s explanation.
“It’s very bad manners,” Cornelius said. But when he said bad manners, I got the impression he meant taboo. Which was good. To a certain degree, the Society worked through social pressure and influence. And until that changed—the supposed modernization that both Alex and Cornelius championed—then having terrible things like implanting memories labeled as taboo by Society members was at least a start.
“Mandy’s cousin Bethany said she had to cancel at the last minute, because her boss wouldn’t let her take time off.” He arched an eyebrow. “Apparently, I’m very stingy with vacation.”
“Oh, no.” I liked Mandy. I didn’t want her involved, whether she was a willing participant or not, in our murder investigation. Then I remembered exactly when Aunt Lula had gotten her gravestone vision. “The tarot cards from this morning, not Aunt Lula’s, the ones you fetched from the store—”
“You think they triggered your aunt’s vision.” When I nodded, Alex quickly brought Cornelius up to speed on Lula’s vision of Alfred’s gravestone.
When he was done, I asked, “Could someone have brainwashed her to commit murder?”
Cornelius said, “Possibly.”
Eyes narrowed, Alex said, “Let’s not jump to conclusions. She’s been compromised, but we don’t know why or by whom.”
And when Alex said “compromised,” that jogged my memory about another interaction I’d had today with Mandy. “She acted oddly when I mentioned Dot and Alfred.”
“You mentioned them by name?” Alex asked.
I nodded. I hadn’t done anything wrong. Mandy moved within our trusted inner circle, and Dot and Alfred’s names hadn’t been secrets. But I still felt guilty.
“We need your witch,” Alfred said, his voice still soft but very firm. “Star. We need her right away. She needs to examine me again.”
And I knew what he was worried about. He was worried he’d been compromised in some way, just like Mandy. That he was a danger to us.
Alex must have thought the same thing, because he didn’t ask questions. He picked up his phone and called Star, disappearing once again into the hallway.
Bradley lifted his hand. But this time, it wasn’t a question. He held a piece of paper aloft like a prize.
Cornelius, who’d been texting, stopped tapping. “What have you got, Bradley?”
And that was one reason I actually liked Cornelius, despite some of his recent less-than-admirable actions. He assumed Bradley had something to contribute. He looked beyond Bradley’s awkwardness and saw the ninja computer sleuth that lurked underneath. Cornelius peeled away layers of superficial fluff with those light blue eyes of his, and he saw the truth. That was why I admired him. It was also one of the reasons I found him terrifying.
Bradley said, “A suspect list. I cross-referenced Society members who were either off-grid or were in New Mexico during the timeframe of Bronislaw Voycheck’s murder with members who were in Austin and near the retirement community or off-grid during Martha Gilroy’s attack.”
“Bradley,” I said, as a wave of relief washed through me, “I could kiss you.”
He looked at me with an appalled expression. “Please don’t.”
23
Whodunit?
A suspect list. ’Bout dang time.
My knees wobbled, that’s how relieved I was. So relieved that I really did have to restrain myself from kissing Bradley…on the cheek. Definitely on the cheek.
“Nicely done, sir.” Cornelius finished his text, then took the paper from Bradley. He pulled a silver pen from his pocket and started to make notes.
As Cornelius scribbled, I considered my weak-kneed reaction. This case had spiraled out of control. We’d been bombarded by distractions—my great-aunt’s corporeal appearance, Alfred’s accidental attack on Star, two murders—and lost track of the initial thread of the case: the break-in at Bradley’s apartment, apparently committed by the evil Bronislaw Voycheck, whoever the heck that was.
It felt like we were sort of getting back on track, even if we had no clue who Mr. Evil was. Even if Mandy had turned into a malevolent robot programmed to destroy us all. Even if it was Bradley who was most on top of this investigation.
A maniacal laugh burbled up in my throat.
Alex came back in just in time to witness me teetering on the edge of hysteria. “Want to share?”
Since any answer I gave would make me look like a nut job, I said, “Pass.”
“Star’s on her way. The kids are in school and her husband is covering for her at the funeral home, so we’ve got her for the next several hours.” He shot Alfred a concerned look, then said, “Francis will be by shortly to escort you to a room in the back.”
The back of my neck prickled. It had been less than twenty-four hours since Bitsy had been holed up in one of those back rooms, hidden away while we’d sorted out what had turned her into zombie girl. She probably was still back there, hiding from me and my mysterious influence over her. I absent-mindedly rubbed the itchy scabs on my arm.
Maybe Wembley and I should open up a B&B next door to Bits, Baubles, and Toadstools. For a restful post-adventure stay, where you could lick your supernatural wounds and hide from the mundane world. I caught a glimpse of Dot’s worried countenance and felt guilty for making light of the situation, even in my head.
“Mallory? Hey, anyone home?” Alex nudged me.
“What?” I snapped. Then I reeled in the cranky and smiled apologetically at him. “Next time you tell me I don’t need regular, high-quality sleep, I’m reminding you of today.”
“Noted,” he said. “Now pick up your phone. It’s been pinging with text messages since I walked in the door.”
As I pulled out my phone, I realized I’d managed once again to turn the volume down. It had been on vibrate. Alex had great hearing; he wasn’t psychic. And I was apparently so distracted that I didn’t feel my butt buzzing. Tapping my phone, I saw three missed texts from Gladys. If she was bugging me about that dang fundraiser again, I might strangle her.
Before I opened the texts and really lost all sense of perspective, I hollered Bradley’s name. When he looked up from his laptop, I said, “Any chance you can look up who on that list has connections to the Midwest? Specifically Nebraska, but also the bordering states?”
Bradley sighed. “That’s what I’m doing. It’s complicated when everyone on the list has multiple identities and a hidden past.”
“Oh.” Of course he was. He was Bradley. “Sorry. And I’m sure it won’t be a problem for you. You’re a sleuthing ninja.”
He perked up at that and went back to his laptop with renewed vigor.
I was surprised my opinion still carried any weight. The deluded guy was holding on to a misguided notion that I was a decent detective. In fact, he was much, much better than I was. Certainly with the digital research components. Also at seeing connections.
Basically, Bradley kicked my butt at everything sleuthing-related but waving a sword around and stabbing people—and even those skills weren’t my own but borrowed from Tangwystl. I still hadn’t taken my sword practice as seriously as I should, possibly because having a living sword was completely awesome and made a busy lady a little lazy.
“I can help him,” Dot said. “If you give me a computer.”
Cornelius didn’t seem too keen. No surprise there. She’d need access to Society membership information to be of much help.
I let them sort out Dot’s participation and the limits thereof while I steeled myself to open Gladys’s nagging texts. I clicked on the first with some surprise: We need to talk.
That was a different tack than her previous messages. I opened the second one.
It’s important. Can we meet?
Maybe I needed to reread those earlier texts. Maybe they’d been in code? No. This was Gladys. She had no problem with being blunt. The only obfuscation on Gladys’s part tended to be unintentional. Her logic sometimes took a few left turns before merging with mainstream thinking.
The transformation from human to vampire was known to scramble a person’s brains. In my case, it fried all the wires that had fueled my anxiety disorders. In Gladys’s case…well, it produced the Gladys that we knew today and, most of the time, loved…when she wasn’t hanging around slimy old-school vamps like Blaine Waldrup.
I opened the last message.
I need to meet you ASAP. Help.
Help. One word that made my head ache, my stomach churn, and my nerves do jumping jacks.
Gladys hadn’t asked for my help since she’d started palling around with her elitist vamp buddy, Blaine. On my last case, the one where I’d been tasked with finding Gladys’s missing friend Bitsy, Gladys had reported her friend as dead to the Society’s emergency response unit. Only after I’d been assigned and she’d been pressured by her boyfriend had she asked me to help, and that was after I showed up on her doorstep.
Much as I hated to take the time while we were in the middle of an investigation, I couldn’t say no. The tone of her texts, the urgency, the request for help… I had to go. “I have to meet with Gladys.”
Alex’s eyebrows lifted. But Cornelius beat him to the punch. “You do realize, Ms. Andrews, that you are ultimately responsible for all of Mr. Snodgrass’s actions, whether you are present or not. Whether you are aware of his actions or not. Whether he himself is aware of those actions or not.”
“It’s an emergency, okay? I wouldn’t leave in the middle of all this, otherwise.” I wasn’t going to say it out loud, but I was concerned about what Star was going to do to Alfred. About what she’d already found this morning and hadn’t told us. About what she’d discovered when she’d run her tests on the samples she’d taken. So, no, I wasn’t keen to leave.
Also, if I was honest with myself, I had some concerns about what Alfred might unknowingly do to Star if she pushed the wrong button inside his head. He’d already attacked her once without meaning to.
My fears made me snappish. “You know what an emergency is, right? So you can stuff your infractions and your consequences up your…left nostril.” So, I improvised poorly when stressed. This wasn’t news to me.
I did a double take. Did the crazy old coot smile at me for just a second? No, I must have been temporarily blinded by his glowing laser-beam eyes, because that would be crazy.
Cornelius glanced at the clock on Alex’s wall. “You have one hour, then I’m sending emergency response to retrieve you.” He must have seen my gaze slip to Alex, because he added, “Alex will be otherwise occupied, so you can expect Anton. And he is not amused by your nickname for him, so expect him to be in a correspondingly poor frame of mind when retrieving you.”
“Two hours,” I said, after doing a little traffic math. “It’ll take me almost an hour to get there and back.”
Cornelius made the appearance of considering my request, then agreed.
Nuts. That had been too easy. I should have asked for three. Whatever Gladys desperately needed, it better not take too long. Who knew what mean Mr. Clean would do to me if he had to fetch me from across town? He probably stored torture devices in that chrome-wheeled Escalade of his.
“We shall see you in two hours, Ms. Andrews,” Cornelius said before turning his attention to Bradley and Dot.
I’d almost been distracted by Gladys’s texts, negotiating (poorly) with Cornelius, and worrying what amazing breakthroughs I’d miss when Dot and Bradley put their heads together. But as I opened the office door to leave, I remembered that I hadn’t gotten a look at the suspect list.
Cell phone in hand, I hurried back to Alex’s desk, where Cornelius had returned the list after making his notes and took a quick snapshot of it.
My heart thumped in my chest as I shoved my phone in my back pocket again. I hadn’t read the entire list. I’d barely gotten a glimpse of the names as I’d snapped the picture, but one name had jumped out at me.
Gladys was a suspect.
So were at least a dozen other people, but I wasn’t about to meet with any of those other people. One thing I knew for sure: if Gladys was involved in any way, it was Blaine who’d put her up to it.
“The clock is ticking, Ms. Andrews.”
I shot Cornelius an annoyed look and double-checked that Alex wasn’t freaking out about me meeting Gladys. If he truly thought her a suspect, he wasn’t likely to let me walk out the door without some kind of backup. But Alex looked calm enough, and he didn’t try to foist a babysitter emergency response guy on me before I left.
I mouthed, “Call me,” to Alex and pointed at Bradley and Dot. Hoping Alex’s nod meant he understood my vague request to be updated on any new info the duo found, I booked it to the parking lot.
24
Mallory Juice
“This is your emergency?” I asked Gladys twenty minutes later. I’d made good time across town while breaking several traffic laws.
That was what happened when uptight old guys with scary eyes and unpleasant henchmen put time limits on my errands. Um, emergencies. I glanced at Gladys. Emergency errands.
“How long have you been like this?” I asked her.
“Sinth I woke upf.” She shot me a frustrated look, one that was a little scary. Not her fault. Huge vamp fangs naturally had that effect. Also, the glowing red eyes didn’t help.
The Society tech writers needed to write a fix into the orientation manual. How not to be scary when you’re flashing fang. Or maybe how not to get your fangs stuck in the extended position.
“Helpf.” She growled in frustration. Not a sound I’d ever heard come from the stylish redhead. She grabbed a pad of paper and jotted down a quick message.
Blaine can’t see me like this.
“Right.” I swallowed back my other response, which was: why the heck are you dating a guy who’s that judgy? Blaine thought I was “broken” and therefore less of a vampire. According to Alfred, that might actually be true. If I was part witch and part something unknown, that technically made me less vampire. “Why are you asking me for help?”
