Authors: Amber Benson
“A very specific him,” Daniel said. “He was moving fast, but it was definitely Oggie. I didn’t see a gun, though.”
“Oggie?” I said, shocked. The Vice-President in Charge of Africa was the last person I would’ve suspected of attempting to commit murder. “Are you sure?”
“As much as I hate to say it, I’m pretty damn positive,” he said, shaking his head. “If he had nothing to do with it, why did he run? It only makes him look guilty.”
I sat there on the ground beside Zinia’s body, wondering what could make someone do something so horrible. What did Oggie have to gain by killing Coy, Constance, and now Zinia? If he was interested in bringing about the destruction of the human world, well, getting his hands on the book was one way to get the ball rolling, but something felt wrong about that hypothesis. Not that I was the greatest judge of character. I’d been wrong about people before and had paid dearly for my naïveté. This was probably just another episode of
Calliope Reaper-Jones: Pollyanna at Large
—
Shit, the book!
I thought.
In the fallout after Zinia’s death, I’d totally forgotten about it. I had to find that book before … I didn’t know before
what
, but I needed to find it.
“Where’s the book?” I said, climbing to my feet, tension filling my body. I felt the tendrils of hysteria beginning to grip my heart, but I beat them back into submission. Now was
not
the time to start freaking out.
“Oh, Jesus, the book is what did this to her?” Daniel said, looking down at Zinia’s body.
I nodded. Together we searched the area around the body, but to my chagrin, both the metal box and the book it had contained were nowhere to be found.
“It’s gone,” I murmured as I sat down on the tile, my body starting to tremble from exhaustion and shock. “Someone took it…”
“Jesus,” Daniel said, sitting down next to me. “What’re you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” I said, leaning forward so I could rest my elbows on my knees, cupping my chin between my hands. “I just don’t know. The book’s gone and three people are dead. I thought I was getting better at this whole Death thing, but if this is any indication…”
Daniel took my hand.
“You’re doing a good job—murders notwithstanding—and you shouldn’t second-guess yourself.”
His words were nice, but they were just words. They didn’t make me feel any better.
“Let’s go get Freezay,” I said, pulling my hand out of Daniel’s grasp. “Maybe he can make some sense out of all of this.”
freezay had not
been a happy camper when we’d found him. The look of pure disappointment on his face when I’d told him what had happened was enough to make me want to go drown myself in the pool. He’d insisted on going to see the body immediately, ignoring my repeated apologies all along the way.
Now, as he knelt down beside what remained of Zinia, it seemed as if his anger had transferred from me to whoever had stolen the book.
“Do you smell that?” Freezay said, crouching down so that his nose was almost touching the pool of vomit Zinia had loosed right before she melted.
Daniel shook his head, but Runt nodded.
“Smells like garlic,” she said.
“She was cooking with it, I think,” I said, having a hard time dragging my eyes away from the body.
Freezay opened his mouth as if he was going to say something, but then shut it again.
“Freezay?” Daniel asked, but the detective just shook his head.
“All right,” Freezay said. “Enough chitchat. Let’s go find Oggie and get him to explain his rationale for running away from a crime scene.”
“What about Zinia?” I asked, not wanting to leave her body on its own in the middle of the garden. “Maybe we could at least get a sheet to cover her with?”
Dusk was upon us now, the light disappearing faster and faster with each passing second. Pretty soon, we were going to be having this conversation in the dark.
“Here,” Daniel said, taking off the light linen jacket he was wearing and draping it across Zinia’s torso. “Is that all right?”
I nodded. Pleased that at least one of the corpses was being treated humanely.
“Thank you,” I said as we followed Freezay back down the pathway to Casa del Amo.
“Of course,” he said, then he reached out and took my hand in his. I squeezed his fingers, letting him know—without uttering a word—how much I’d missed him.
While we were canoodling, Freezay had picked up the pace so that now he and Runt were almost two body lengths ahead of us.
“Anyone had eyes on Jarvis recently?” he called back to us.
“I saw him over by Casa de la Luna earlier,” Daniel said.
“What were you doing there?” I asked, my voice low enough that only Daniel heard my question.
“I was looking out for you.”
“Oh,” I said, very much liking the feel of his fingers laced through mine.
“You have a habit of getting into trouble,” Daniel added, his ice blue eyes searching my face as he spoke. “I didn’t want anything to happen to you.”
Not sure what to say in response, I ducked my head, letting my eyes drift to the ground as I tried to collect my thoughts. I didn’t want—no, scratch that—I
couldn’t
get my hopes up where Daniel was concerned. If he didn’t want to be with me,
really be with me
, then opening myself up to him was a huge mistake. I was going to get my heart trampled on if I mistook him being nice to me as him wanting to be in a relationship again.
Still, I couldn’t make myself drop his hand … and that meant I was already screwed.
“Runt, can you run ahead and find Jarvis?” Freezay said, interrupting my thoughts. “Tell him to meet us in the drawing room.”
“Sure thing,” Runt said, taking off down the path, a shadowy blur passing through the twilight.
“Daniel, you and I are going to drop Calliope off at the drawing room and then we’re going to find Oggie.”
“Why are you dropping me off at the drawing room?” I bristled, not liking any plan that called for me being coddled.
“You can’t cause any trouble there,” Freezay said brusquely, treating me as if I were a recalcitrant child.
“It’s safer there, Cal,” Daniel added as we took the long way around the pool, the marble statues looking strangely evil in the gloaming.
“I’m not a child,” I said, dropping Daniel’s hand and striding ahead of him—and then Freezay—as I let anger fuel my speed. My frustration at being treated like a baby made me oblivious to everything around me, and I slammed right into Oggie without even seeing him, the impact strong enough that it sent us both sprawling.
I fell backward, my head cracking against the edge of a marble pedestal that boasted a statue of the Goddess Athena. My vision tunneled, and for a moment I thought I was going to black out, but then the world slowly shifted back into focus with a startling clarity that made me blink twice. I reached up to make sure I wasn’t missing a chunk of my skull, but everything seemed to be exactly where it was supposed to be.
“I’m sorry,” I said as I sat up, wincing as I felt the beginnings of a massive headache stirring inside my cranium. “I wasn’t looking where I was—”
And that was when I realized who I’d just power-walked myself into. Without saying another word, I threw myself forward, wrapping my arms around his legs so he couldn’t escape.
“Let me go!” Oggie cried.
“Not a chance,” I said through gritted teeth as he fought to pry me off him.
It only took a second for Daniel and Freezay to catch up to us. They each secured one of Oggie’s arms, trying to drag him to his feet, though he continued to flop around like a fish on a line, impeding the process.
“Please, Madame Death, won’t you let me explain myself?” Oggie cried, his dark eyes boring into mine. He looked so pathetic hanging there that I started to feel bad about letting Daniel and Freezay manhandle him.
“Go ahead, explain,” I said—but I was glad when the guys
didn’t release him. I wasn’t fully satisfied that he wouldn’t run away again given half a chance.
“I didn’t kill anyone,” he began, his sclera so exposed that his eyes looked ready to pop out of his skull. “I was on my way to meet someone when I heard the shots.”
“Who were you meeting?” Freezay asked, shaking Oggie like a rag doll.
“Uriah Drood,” he said, letting the name drop like a stone. “I’m sure he’s responsible for what happened to the cook.”
There was so much finger-pointing going on at the Haunted Hearts Castle, it was beginning to feel like Washington, D.C., had been transplanted to the Central Coast of California.
“Okay, let’s go have ourselves a little chat,” Freezay said—and bowler hat askew on his towhead, he and Daniel dragged Oggie back to the house.
the drawing room
was full of people when we arrived.
Alameda stood by the fireplace, the rigid set of her shoulders clueing me in that something had happened in our absence. Naapi sat across from her on the love seat—a sour look on his face, like he’d just swallowed something exceedingly unpalatable.
Erlik sat in a nearby armchair, glowering over at Yum Cimil and Fabian Lazarev, who stood by the sideboard with an open bottle of bourbon between them as Lazarev made drinks.
“What the …” Erlik said as we crossed the threshold, Freezay and Daniel dragging their prisoner behind them—but the large man immediately got up to help Daniel and Freezay settle Oggie into one of the other armchairs.
“Zinia Monroe’s been murdered,” Freezay intoned, giving everyone in the room the stink eye. “Oggie, here, fled the scene of the crime, so it doesn’t look very good for him—”
“No!” Alameda shrieked as she crossed the room and threw herself at Oggie’s feet. “He murdered no one!”
“It’s all right, my dear,” Oggie whispered, stroking Alameda’s hair as she wrapped her arms around his waist.
“Stop it!” Naapi cried, pulling himself up off the love seat and crossing the room.
Eyes wild, he grabbed Alameda by the shoulders and ripped her away from Oggie, lifting her bodily in the air by her collar. Oggie didn’t take too kindly to Naapi’s rude behavior.
“Leave her alone,” he said, his voice as calm as a cobra right before it struck.
“She’s my consort and you’d best remember it,” Naapi spat at him, Alameda wriggling like a cat in his arms.
“I warned you,” Oggie said—and then he was on his feet, his fist connecting with the soft tissue under Naapi’s chin. The older man wasn’t prepared for the attack, immediately releasing his hold on Alameda to clutch at his injured throat. Dazed, he stumbled over to the fireplace and leaned against the mantel for support.
“Don’t ever touch me again,” Alameda said to Naapi as she scampered back into Oggie’s arms.
It was a rough thing to watch play out—an old God losing his woman to a younger, more able-bodied man—but it wasn’t really a shocker. Evidently we’d missed the big reveal while we’d been outside with Zinia’s body, and I was curious to know how long the affair had been going on and how long it would’ve continued had Naapi never discovered it.
“Oggie didn’t murder anyone,” Fabian Lazarev said, turning around so he could glare at me. It was nice to know he’d concretized all his anger and aggression around me.
“Then why did he run away from the crime scene?” Freezay asked.
“He probably assumed you were going to wrongfully accuse him of the crime, so he tried to make himself scarce,” Lazarev said, scowling at the detective. “I would’ve done the same thing. You people are useless. Ineffectual and worthless.”
Freezay shook away Lazarev’s invective like water off a duck’s back.
“Where were the rest of you?” he asked, moving ahead with the investigation.
“Erlik, Naapi, Alameda,” Lazarev said, ticking the names off in rapid fire succession. “And myself and Yum Cimil, of course, were in the living room.”
“It pains me to say it, but Fabian’s right,” Erlik said, returning to his spot on the love seat. “We’ve all been together, thinking there was safety in numbers.”
“I have nothing to hide,” Oggie said. “I told you exactly why I was there.”
“Nothing to hide?” Naapi said as he turned around and pointed at Oggie, his voice scratchy as his whole body shook with rage. “You’ve just been fucking her behind my back, that’s all. But you’re right. Nothing to hide there.”
“I love him and he loves me,” Alameda cried, tearing herself away from Oggie to glare at Naapi.
“Uriah Drood knew about our affair,” Oggie said to Freezay—and he had the class to look apologetic about it. “I assumed he was going to try to blackmail me when he asked me to meet him at the Assyrian Obelisk, but he didn’t have the chance. When I got there, I heard the shots and fled, fearing for my life.”
Well, at least that answers the question as to who Alameda was kissing in the statuary garden last night,
I thought as I glanced over at Daniel, knowing that he was thinking the exact same thing.