“I don’t know yet. I think we need to go find us a gill-man.”
Chapter 14
THE VAMPIRE was waiting for us outside the bar. Ben Rossi wore a canvas jacket, dark red beanie, tight jeans, and boots. He looked more like a dockworker just out of college than a hundred-year-old firefighter. The shadow from the roof overhang kept him out of the spotty sunlight as he leaned against the warehouse and tipped two fingers to his forehead in greeting.
“Good day, officers.”
“Ben,” I said. “What’s down?”
He pushed off the wall, hands still in his pockets. “Old Rossi heard you hired Ryder Bailey on to the force. That right?”
Was there anyone in town who hadn’t heard that news? And why was everyone making such a big deal out of it?
“That’s right.”
Ben bit at his bottom lip and raised his eyebrows. “You might want to rethink that.”
“I don’t think I do.”
“All right. Old Rossi would like you to rethink that.”
“Why?”
Ben shrugged. “He was cleansing his chakras or fluffing his aura or some such bull. Didn’t go into details. Just told me to tell you: fire Ryder.”
“I don’t allow vampires to dictate my human resource decisions.”
Ben flashed a bit of fang in his smile. “I figured you’d say that. You know I’m just the messenger.”
“I know. Do me a favor? Tell Old Rossi that if he has a problem with Ryder, he can come talk to me himself.”
“I’ll let him know, chief. Say…come on by our place next Saturday. Jame and I are having a housewarming party.”
“Do you want me there as a friend or in an official capacity?”
“Yes. I figure we’re gonna have a lot of family stop in.” He grinned again, then pushed off the wall. “See you around, chief. Jean.”
“Bye, Ben,” Jean said. “Think we should be worried?”
I didn’t know if she meant about Old Rossi’s warning, the housewarming invite, or us hiring Ryder.
“Probably,” I said, just to cover the bases.
We found Chris right where I expected him to be: upstairs at the bar.
We found him in a state I didn’t expect him to be: drunk.
Even more interestingly, we found him in the company of both Lila Carson and her sister Margot Lapointe.
They sat in the corner booth, mostly out of sight of the rest of the diners, though I noted the bartender, Nick, a mortal, was keeping a close eye on them.
I gave Nick a nod as Jean and I walked over to Chris and company.
“Delaney Reed,” Chris said, drawing out my name with more Louisiana than I’d heard out of him in a while. “Have yourself a seat. Have yourself a drink.”
Chris wore a black shirt with a black band tied around his upper arm. A petrified shark’s tooth centered his chest, hanging from a chain I knew was very old, and pure gold. It was an ancient talisman. I knew he wore it whenever a god died.
He’d once told me it was a symbol for life and death, a reminder that there was always something out there bigger than you that could, and likely would, kill you and eat you.
“I need to talk to you, Chris. Business.”
“Do you need us to go?” Margot asked.
Margot and Lila looked like sisters if you compared their pointed chins, petite noses, and the shape of their eyes. But while Margot was blonde with loopy curls held that way by lots of product, Lila’s hair was brunette and worn straight. They must have had a girls’ day out and both gotten multicolored feather extensions scattered in their hair.
Chris’s arm was draped over the back of the booth seat behind Margot, his hand absently stroking her curls and feathers. Lila sat just out of his reach, head down.
Lila was the elder sister, I decided. Any makeup she might have been wearing had been scrubbed off hard enough to leave her eyes and cheeks spotty and pink. When she looked up from the nearly disintegrated wadded napkin in her hands, her eyes were bloodshot and red-lined, her nose pink. She hadn’t scrubbed off her makeup. She’d cried it off.
“I’m so sorry about Heim, Lila,” I began, gently.
Her eyes filled with a wrenching mix of emotions, as if her heart strained for a shred of hope, even though her mind knew he was dead.
“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” Margot snapped. She looked…angry. Annoyed. Probably mad that her sister’s ex-boyfriend had made Lila cry again. “Heim was a selfish, cheating bastard. He deserved what he got.”
“No,” Lila said quietly, her voice softened by tears. “He didn’t deserve that. He didn’t. He was…he was so young.”
Several hundred years old, but I couldn’t tell her that. She’d loved the man he’d been when they dated for two years. I knew that man was most often kind and good, even if he did love the ocean and his ship more than he loved Lila Carson.
Gods and mortals never lasted.
Margot was still scowling at us, but she wrapped her arm over her sister’s shoulders and pulled her tight. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. Is there something you wanted?” she asked.
“Just some basic information about the last time you saw Heim,” Jean said evenly. “Would you ladies mind if I sat with you for a bit?” Apparently, she was going to take the sisters, which meant I was on gill-man duty.
“Chris?” I said. “Can we talk in private?”
“Sure.” He lifted his arm and slid out of the booth.
Margot looked a little startled that he was leaving her. “It will be fine.” He leaned down and placed a kiss on her temple. “I’ll be right back. You’re in good hands with Jean.”
Margot nodded and Lila wiped the tattered napkin over her nose as Jean sat next to her.
“This way, then.” Chris walked with a little less of his distinctive grace. Not that he was unsteady on his feet, but he had been drinking, and it showed in his almost overly loose joint movements. I was pretty sure he had a skeleton of bone, but right now he appeared to be held together by sinew and cartilage.
I followed him to the other side of the room, and up a flight of stairs to a door that opened on his office.
The two large windows ate up the back wall behind the desk and looked out over the ships, the bay, and the opposite shore, with lights from houses twinkling in the low haze that covered the hill. The office was smothered in label designs, awards, and certificates of excellence, along with a few signed photos of Chris posing with celebrities, musicians, and a smattering of other famous people.
He walked straight to a dented mini-fridge that looked like it might have once been painted red, and pulled out two beers. He popped them open, offered me one.
“Can’t. This really is business.”
“I know.” Chris took a drink of his beer, and still held the other bottle out at arm’s length for me. “It’s about Heim. He was Asgardian. He would have wanted you to at least take one drink in his memory.”
I sighed. “I know.” I took the beer, glanced at the label. It was a dark porter Twin Rocks, one of the ones that had made Chris, and Jump Off Jack’s, so famous. I lifted it a little, and Chris lifted his.
“To Heimdall,” Chris said. “Long may he live.”
“To Heimdall.” I took a gulp, holding a memory of Heim in my mind. A time when he and I and Chris took the chairs out on the dock to cast lines for rockfish. Heim and Chris sang a song I thought had been incredibly raunchy. I’d been twelve, and by the end of the afternoon, I’d learned every word and been sworn never to tell my father where I’d heard it.
Good times.
The rich, deep flavor filled my mouth and ran a cool heat down to the bottom of my belly. “You know what I’m going to ask you, Chris.”
He sat on the edge of his desk, stretching his long legs out in front of him, one ankle crossed over the other. He was wearing slippers. “If I know who killed him?”
“Yes. But first, I need to know if you killed him.”
He took another drink of beer, watching me as he did so. “Let me get this right. You’re here, in my office, asking me if I killed one of my closest friends?”
“It’s what a police officer does. Asks all the hard questions. Of everyone.”
“All right, I’ll say it here, and I’ll say it anywhere else you need me to. I didn’t kill Heim. I loved him, as a friend. He was a good man. He understood the sea, understood life and the pace of it in a way I could only share with a few others. He was my friend, Delaney. If I knew who wanted him dead, you’d have to throw me behind bars, because I would find them and beat the life out of them.”
His eyes, usually a smoky brown, glinted with red for a moment.
He was angry. Very angry.
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry. I liked Heim too. I’m going to miss him.” I sat down in the chair next to the mini-fridge and took another drink of beer, then pressed the bottle against my forehead. “We don’t think his death was an accident.”
“I gathered that when you accused me of killing him.”
“Do you know who was angry at him?”
He tipped the beer up and then set the empty bottle on his desk. “There’s always someone upset about something.”
“Names, Chris. Any you can think of. I want to know who did this. I’m not going to let them get away with it.”
He shook his head and folded arms over his chest. “No one stands out. Hera was upset that he slipped us a few prime catches over the last month or so, but you know her. Liked to make us think she was angry about it, when she had Pete supplying her plenty of prime catch on the side. She wouldn’t stoop so low as to kill Heim and risk being thrown out of Ordinary over fish.”
I nodded. “I know.”
“He had his arguments with a few other people, a few other gods and creatures. Odin once or twice, but Odin yells at everyone. Bertie, over judging the contest. Tried to withdraw when he found out I had entered. But I can’t…I just can’t see why any of them would kill him.”
“Not even for the Rhubarb Rally?”
Chris stared at me for a long moment. “Is that a serious question?”
“Dan Perkin seems to think it would be enough motivation for murder.”
“Dan Perkin is an ass. I’m looking forward to the day he’s the one we’re burying.”
“That’s what he says about you.”
“At least something about this week is normal.” He reached into the fridge for another beer and flipped the cap off with his thumb.
“This is Ordinary,” I said, lifting my nearly full beer. “Nothing about it has ever been normal.”
Chapter 15
CHRIS HAD an alibi for the time period wherein Heim had been harmed. He had been spending that time with Lila. Mostly, he admitted to me, trying to talk Lila out of enacting petty revenge against Heim. He assured me her plans involved egging his house, or putting sugar in his gas tank, or welding his crab traps shut, not clubbing him over the head and kicking him into the sea.
She had certainly looked torn up about his death. I just hoped she wasn’t faking it.
“She’s not faking it,” Jean said as she and I took a seat at a table close to the front door of Jump Off Jack’s. Jean had ordered us iced tea and cheese bread.
“Late lunch or early dinner?” I asked.
“Both. You’re too thin. We’re on our break.” She tore off a piece of bread and took a big bite.
I pulled a piece of bread my way and dug in. It was delicious, the cheese from local farms in Hebo, the bread fresh, with just a bite of heat in it. Jalapeno, I thought.
“Get anything useful from the sisters?”
Jean didn’t look over at Margot and Lila, who stood at the table, saying their goodbyes to Chris.
“Not really. Lila’s reeling from his death. She had plans, things she wanted to do to him to make him pay for breaking up with her. She
wanted
a chance at making his life miserable. She didn’t want him dead. I think she’s truly sorry that he is.”
It was a backward kind of logic, but I could understand it. The heart, even the jilted heart—maybe especially the jilted heart—wanted what it wanted.
“You think she’s upset she didn’t get a chance at revenge?”
“No. I think…” She popped another bite of bread in her mouth. “If he were still alive, she’d be buying rotten potatoes to hide in the walls of his house. Now that he’s gone, she’s mourning him. Thinking of all the great times they’d had together. She’s sad.”
“She was never really over him, was she?”
Jean tipped her head a bit. “He was a god. There’s a certain…I don’t know, tingle about them, you know? Even though they’re temporarily mortal, there’s something really attractive about them. When I was little I had the biggest crush on Shiva, remember?”
I smiled. “I’d forgotten about that. Dad thought it was cute.”
“Dad did. Mom didn’t. She sat me down and made me promise I wouldn’t run away to go live with him in the junkyard.”
“You wouldn’t have run away.”
“Oh, yes, I would. I had my suitcase packed. But she explained it was the god stuff that drew me, like a magnet to a refrigerator. And then she made Dad take me out to Gaia’s place so I could see all the god powers she was keeping that year.”
“When did this happen?” I asked. “Where was I?”
“Worrying about if Ryder would like your hair in braids or in a ponytail.”
I grimaced. “Middle school?” I’d worn a braid on one side and a ponytail on the other for a week, to try and figure out which one he liked more. He was more interested in Sheila Guberman’s rainbow braces.
I gave up and wore my hair long, tucked behind my ears.
Jean took half the remaining bread and pushed the plate my way with one finger.
“Did seeing the powers make a difference?” I asked.
“I was hypnotized by it. I think I cried, out of joy or wonder, or…I don’t know. It was a lot for a nine-year-old to see all that power, that magic right there in a hollowed old log.”
“Is that where she kept it?”
Jean nodded. “It was absolutely wonderful. And then when I looked at Shiva, he seemed less wonderful. Still…intriguing, but I could tell that the thing about him that I’d found so amazing was the echo of his power.”
“And then what happened?”
“I went back to playing video games, happily ever after. Haven’t you ever felt it? That draw to the deities?”
I shook my head. “I’m immune to it, I guess. I can tell when they’re being god-ish, even when they aren’t carrying power, but it’s not hypnotizing, doesn’t draw me in.”