Authors: Kelly Rey
I had too many people with too many SUVs and too many motives, while one of them was putting me squarely in Detective Hairy Hands' crosshairs. "Nothing," I said. "I've got nothing."
"Not true," Maizy told me. "You have that boundless optimism."
I slid her a look out of the corner of my eye. She gave me a bright smile. "I know," she said. "There's a discount liquor store just off the highway. We can stop for—"
"No," I said. "You're cut off."
Her lower lip pooched out. "But I haven't even had anything."
"I'm not contributing to the delinquency of a minor," I told her. "Anyway, you have to drive."
Her eyes lit up. "Oh, well, that's different. Where are we going? I don't think we should go see Tippi McWirth until we talk to Vicky. I know, we'll go to the Society of Seers. I think that Artemis Angle dude could be up to something. He has a weird vibe."
"And maybe he has an SUV," I said.
"Tippi McWirth has an SUV," Maizy pointed out.
I nodded. "And they both have a motive. Everyone has a motive." I yawned hugely. I wasn't sleeping all that well lately, and I didn't expect that to change any time soon.
Maizy frowned at me. "You want to catch some Zs before we leave so you don't fall asleep? I'm not supposed to drive without supervision."
I gave her a look. "You've got to be kidding."
She shrugged. "I know, it seems weird to me, too. My Paw-Paw drives without supervision, and he's taken out two flower beds and a koi pond."
I leaned against the counter, the gravity of what was happening hitting me like a sledgehammer. "Maizy, why would anyone try to frame me for Dorcas's murder?"
"Maybe they don't want to frame you so much as unframe themselves," she said. "Come on, if we hurry we can get to SOS before five." She reached for her coat. "Did you talk to Uncle Curt before he left?" she asked casually.
I shook my head. "I'm not normal enough for him. He deserves a normal woman."
"So be normal," Maizy said. "Whatever that means."
I zipped up my coat and tossed her my car keys. "What
does
it mean?"
"Beats me. Make him meatloaf. I hear meatloaf's popular with guys."
"I don't know how to make meatloaf," I said. "I don't know how to make anything."
Maizy rolled her eyes. "That's so not true. You can make an awesome mess. Lucky for you, you know me. Come on, if you're good in the car, I'll help you grocery shop for dinner with Uncle Curt."
"I can shop for my own groceries," I told her. "I'm not six years old, Maizy."
"Not seeing the evidence," she called on the way out the door.
The Society of Seers was located in a thriving business park, the kind with multiple identical green glass buildings scattered around acres of parking lot, with random trees and grass thrown in for curb appeal. It was the modern day rendition of the Emerald City.
It was also a problem. Maizy brought the Escort to a stop and looked toward multiple parking lots. "There are a lot of SUVs here."
There was a lot of everything there, most of it costing forty grand or higher. "Let's just drive down the rows," I suggested. "Maybe something will click."
Ten minutes later, we rolled to a stop in an empty spot, and Maizy killed the engine. "Maybe he has a second car."
"Maybe it's not him to begin with," I said. "Maybe it's Tippi after all." After the temporary morale boost I'd had from being proactive on my own behalf, I was sliding back toward dejected. Which really wasn't like me. I was usually much more plucky. The novelty of being a murder suspect was sucking all the fun out of my life.
We sat there thinking about it while people trickled in and out of the building in front of us. In its upper left-hand corner was a ginormous number nine, the only thing differentiating it from number eight to its right and number ten to its left.
"What floor?" I asked.
"Four." Maizy pulled the key from the ignition. "Might as well go in."
I could tell she didn't really want to go talk to Artemis Angle. I could tell because she sat there clutching the car key and staring straight ahead, unmoving. Maizy was usually three furlongs in front of me in whatever we did. "He really spooks you, doesn't he?" I asked her.
She nodded. "He's so…"
"Apocalyptic?" I said.
"Intense," she said.
Oh. That too.
"It's as if he can read your mind." She shivered. "And I only talked to him for a few minutes at the wake. He made my hair stand on end."
"He's a car mechanic," I told her.
"And Lucifer was a fallen angel," she said.
We got out of the car.
The Society of Seers turned out to be one chubby, orange-haired woman wearing polyester slacks and Keds behind a card table, smoking and looking bored. A red desk phone sat unringing on the table. Smoke hung heavy in the air. Light slanted in through the windows on the far side of the room and splashed across the floor in aggressive pools. An open door stood off to the right. The whole office was eerily quiet: no sounds of typing, or chatting, or even bubbles rising in a water cooler.
"Help you?" she asked, squinting into her smoke contrail.
"Is this all there is to it?" Maizy asked, sounding disappointed. "I expected…" She glanced around. "Something else."
The woman looked surprised. "What more do you need?" She gestured broadly. "Got a phone, electricity." Her voice dissolved into a hacking cough.
Maizy and I took a discreet step to the side, out of the line of fire.
"We're here to see Artemis Angle," I said. "Is he in?"
"He's in," a male voice said from our right. And I knew what Maizy meant when she said he made her hair stand on end.
My
hair was suddenly standing on end. Plus I had a strange high, thin ringing in my ears. I thought again that Artemis Angle had some sort of weird force field around him. I glanced at Maizy. She was shaking her head a little, the way you do when you get water in your ear. She heard it too.
I looked over at him. Same olive skin, same impenetrable eyes, same black hair shot through with silver. The smirk was new. "Why don't we talk in here?" He stepped aside to let us pass in front of him. His cologne or aftershave was musky and not unpleasant. His office was small, with a cheap little desk and two cheap little unpadded chairs facing it. His phone was a basic Princess model, pushed to the side. The blotter was buried under handwritten notes and typed letters and bills, some of them bearing red stamps of the
Past Due
variety. A spiral-bound day planner filled with a lot of white space. None of the accoutrements of the successful business executive. I figured there was a reason for that, remembering what Charlotte had told me.
Artemis Angle poured himself into the chair behind the desk and studied us. I pressed the side of my foot against Maizy's, silently willing her to hold steady. "Let me guess," he said finally, the smirk still in place. It showed the hint of a dimple. Which only made me notice his slight resemblance to Curt all over again. Evil Curt. "You're here to talk about Dorcas Beeber."
Maizy gave a start. I tapped her foot with mine. "What makes you say that?" I asked. I might have been talking too loudly thanks to the noise in my ears. And my arm hairs were sort of prickling. It was like standing outside in a lightning storm.
"You were both at her funeral," he said.
My cheeks were getting hot again. Was there
anyone
who missed our performance at Gate of Heaven?
"You were talking to Charlotte Duncan," he said.
Duncan. I tucked the name away for possible future use while I tried to relax. He was talking about the wake. He hadn't seen us at the cemetery after all.
"And you were at the cemetery," he added. He looked at me. "Next time try tape."
Maizy opened her mouth, but I nudged her foot again, and she closed it.
"You're obviously not police officers," he said. His gaze slid to Maizy. "So who are you, exactly?"
"I'm Kaci King," Maizy said immediately. I shot her a look. Good to know even Artemis Angle couldn't tamp down the essential Maizy for long. "Mrs. Beeber guided my grandmother before she passed away in a tragic trolley car accident." She shook her head sadly. "That's one she didn't see coming."
"Trolley car accident." Artemis Angle cocked his head. "Where might your grandmother have encountered a trolley car in New Jersey?"
Maizy frowned. "Maybe it was a pedicab on the Boardwalk."
"Sounds tragic," he said.
"You have no idea," Maizy agreed. "There were no survivors. Even the seagull died."
Angle's mouth twitched, and the smirk momentarily became a hint of a grin. It was hard to imagine him working under the hood of a car. "Now I understand why you were there," he told Maizy. "But why are you here?"
"My grandmother thought so highly of Mrs. Beeber," she said. "I wanted to learn more about her."
"I'm not sure I can help you with that," he said. "Maybe you should be talking to her husband."
"We don't want to intrude on his grief," I piped up. "Besides, Mrs. Duncan told us Dorcas was…"—your cash cow—"…very valuable to you in your business."
The phone jockey launched into another coughing fit. I cringed, wondering if I should hold my breath on the way out.
Artemis Angle leveled his intense gaze on me. "So Charlotte Duncan was talking about me."
"No," I said immediately. "Not about you, per se. More about Dorcas. She was very impressed with Dorcas."
He gave a tiny nod of acknowledgment. "Dorcas was very impressive."
"So was she?" I asked innocently. "Valuable to your business?"
More coughing, followed by some muttering about welcoming imminent death.
"Would you excuse me?" Without waiting for a response, Artemis Angle slithered out of the office.
Seconds later I was standing over his desk, looking over the avalanche of papers. Artemis Angle was no neat freak, and he could have used some lessons in penmanship. I could hardly read the scribbled note tucked partially beneath his Princess phone. Just enough to see Flight 2752 to the Bahamas, with Dorcas's name scrawled below that.
Sure seemed as if Dorcas was valuable to him. Valuable enough to jet off to an island paradise together? I tried to picture Dorcas and Artemis Angle cozying up over a crystal ball made for two. He didn't seem like her type, especially when I thought about fussy little Weaver, but some women liked bad boys, and Artemis Angle seemed as bad as they came.
But an affair hardly gave him a reason to kill her. Unless she broke off the affair along with the business relationship. Was Artemis Angle a man scorned two times over?
I made a move to sit down again when my gaze fell on a letter from Atlantic Bank & Trust. I couldn't help myself—I scanned it, my pulse kicking up a notch. It was a foreclosure notice. Artemis Angle was losing his house. Maybe because his cash cow Dorcas had taken her talents and income elsewhere? If the housewife at the card table was all he had going for him, I doubted he could even afford to put gas in his car. The phone hadn't rung once since we'd been there.
"Jamie!" Maizy whispered.
I heard approaching footsteps and flung myself into my chair just as Artemis Angle stepped through the doorway. I was panting a little, and I was pretty sure my face was red. Deception had never been my strong suit. Neither was athleticism, because my hamstring immediately seized up on me, and I became the first human being in recorded history to pull a hamstring sitting down.
Thankfully I hadn't touched anything on his desk, because his eyes went there immediately before returning to me, slitted in irritation. I didn't much care at that point. I was too busy kneading my hamstring.
"She's got a cramp," Maizy told him. "She was trying to walk it off."
Artemis Angle slid into his chair, his eyes sweeping across his desk. I didn't believe he had any sixth sense that told him if something had been disturbed. Probably he was just trying to play mind games.
He reached out very deliberately and slid the flight information note underneath another paper before meeting my eyes. And suddenly he looked nothing like Curt. I couldn't stop the chill that shimmied up my spine, making me shiver.
Well done on the mind games.
"We should be on our way," I said. I made a move to stand up, but my hamstring had other ideas.
"Sit," he said easily. "Relax. Hamstrings can be nasty."
I got the feeling they weren't the only thing in the room that could be nasty.
"Some injuries tend to linger." He picked up a pencil, holding it with both hands. "Some even get worse, no matter what you do." With a sudden twist he snapped the pencil in two and dropped the pieces on his blotter.
Subtle.
"You'll want to ice that," he told me.
Maybe I could get him to breathe on it. "I'll take care of it when I get home," I said. "It's getting—"
"I'd like you to know that Charlotte Duncan does not care for me," he said, as if I hadn't been speaking. "You may want to know why." He looked at Maizy, with less amusement than before. "It may tell you more about Dorcas Beeber." His mouth twitched as if he was fighting another smirk. He was mocking us. I felt my own lip start to curl. I didn't like being mocked. "Apparently Charlotte was under the impression that I was holding Dorcas back from pursuing her dream."
"Mall kiosks," I said.
"Mall kiosks," he agreed. "In truth, it was just the opposite. I admired Dorcas. I found her highly creative. I even offered financial backing for minimal equity. She turned me down, of course." He spread his hands. "So I wished her well, and we parted ways."
"That's good enough for me." I grabbed hold of the arms of my chair and pushed myself to my feet. It was going to be hard to make a dignified exit when I limped out the door.
"I hope that it is." And Artemis Angle was on his feet without seeming to move a muscle. This guy was definitely a ten on the creep meter. He gave Seaver Beeber a run for his money in that department.
Maizy got up, too, with a look on her face that I recognized too well. Before I could stop her, she had her hands planted on her hips and demanded, "Do you have any idea how many trees died so you can sit here breaking pencils in half? Deforestation is a real problem, you know."