The Hysteria: Book 4, The Eddie McCloskey Paranormal Mystery Series (The Unearthed) (5 page)

“Eddie.”

I only jumped about six inches.

Melanie stood in the doorway. She’d traded the sweat capris for teeny, tiny shorts. Her legs were longer than Moby Dick.

But there was something off about her. I couldn’t exactly place it. I noticed again that she looked old for her age. I knew she was early-twenties but she could have passed for early thirties. She had age lines and crow’s feet that were beyond her years. It made me think of her father, perhaps it was genetic?

“Your sister’s quite an artist.” I held up the paper. “Know what this is?”

She stepped into the room. To say she was a completely different person wouldn’t be that far off. She hit me with a smile that could knock down a skyscraper.

“My sister’s quite a lot of things.” She went to Megan’s desk, pretended to look at the things on it. “Would you forgive me for earlier? I’m under quite a deal of stress.”

“You sound like your father.”

She looked over her shoulder at me. It was cute. I pretended it wasn’t.

“Do you think you’ll find her?”

“Yes.”

She turned fully around, put her volleyball ass on Megan’s desk. Not that I was paying attention to things like that. “Why?”

“Because thinking the opposite wouldn’t get me anywhere.”

She tilted her head to the side.

I said, “Do you want me to?”

“Find her?”

“Yeah.”

“Of course.”

“Where do you think she is?”

“I think she’s with her ex-husband.”

“Why would she be with him?”

“She told me all about him.” She looked me up and down with x-ray eyes and I felt very exposed despite my loose jeans and button-down shirt. “He knew how to please a woman.”

“They continue with the fun after the dissolution?”

She shrugged, like it was obvious they had.

“But why’d she disappear to do that?”

“Because Dad.”

“Because the same old man who said nothing but good things about his ex-son-in-law?”

“Dad’s a liar.”

She got very European and invaded my personal space. I could feel the heat coming off her in intensifying waves.

“Melanie.” I side-stepped her. “If you know where she is, you need to tell me.”

She tried to crowd me again. I put my hands on her shoulders.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. “Don’t like what you see on the menu?”

“She could be very sick, Melanie. We need to find her. If you can help, you need to.”

She tried to kiss me. I tried not to kiss her. I succeeded.

“What’s your deal?” she asked.

“Your sister’s missing.”

She gave me a good shove. I wasn’t expecting it so I stumbled back a couple feet but fortunately kept my balance. At the door Melanie threw me one last look. All the heat had morphed into anger.

“Stay the hell away from me, Eddie.”

“You know, you’re sending me mixed signals.”

“Fuck you.”

When she was gone, I went back to Megan’s drawing. I tried to divine some hidden meaning from the picture but found none. I scanned every inch of it, hoping to find something.

In the bottom right corner, there was a date tattooed on a woman’s bare leg. It was Friday of last week.

The next morning I took the chair away from the door and unlocked the knob. I hadn’t slept well, and not because of the time change. I’d spent most of the night listening for footsteps in the hallway and wondering if Morgan or Melanie or even Mia were lurking.

I found Strongbow in Turner’s detached garage. Turner had an exercise space sectioned off in the far corner, away from his personal armada of prohibitively expensive vehicles.

“Megan’s ex-husband. Give me the juice.”

Strongbow dropped off the pull-up bar. He’d worked up a good sweat and was looking very Marine. “James Witherspoon. Late twenties. Well on his way to his second million.”

Strongbow went to the wall where there was an oversized dart board. I didn’t know what he was doing till he picked up three knives off the window ledge next to it.

“You throw?” I said.

He nodded and took about ten paces from the wall till he was even with me.

“Got an address on this guy?” I asked.

Thump
. He stuck the first knife a hair right of the bull’s eye.

“No.”

I watched him set up, eye the board, bring the knife up and—

Thump
.

The second knife hit the bull’s eye.

I don’t like knives. Eamon Moriarty had killed my brother with a knife. Then he’d almost gotten me also. The sight of a blade sent a sharp pain through my gut. The stab wound still hurt, all these years later. In prison, somebody had tried to shank me. In my dreams, I can still feel the blade ripping into me.

I don’t like knives, don’t even like using them to cut bread.

Thump
. The third knife hit just left of the eye. Strongbow went to collect them. I made a mental note:
never get into a knife fight with Strongbow.

***

Turner was already out somewhere and I didn’t feel like waiting around. I called Chester Leonard.

“What do you want?” he said.

“Do you have an address on Megan’s ex-husband?”

“Yeah.” He killed the call before I could follow-up.

I tried Quick at the police station.

“What do you want, McCloskey?”

“Looking for an address on Megan’s ex-husband.”

“Can’t help you there. You’re not licensed.”

“Jesus Christ, Quick—how about a place of business?”

In the background, somebody was shouting about another body coming in. I heard a door shut and the background noise went away.

“Alright, you didn’t get this from me. But I’ll give it to you because we’re stretched a little thin here. I want whatever you get.”

***

“He’s…not here today,” the young, uncertain voice said. She sounded like she’d just graduated high school.

“Is it James or Jim?” I asked the assistant.

“He goes by Jamie, actually.”

“Can you give me his cell?”

She went quieter than a Swiss banker.

I said, “How about this? Can you call his cell and tell him who I am and that his ex-wife is missing and give him my number?”

“Uhhhh...”

“Look, Deb, I appreciate your loyalty to your boss but it’s real important I talk to him. We need his help. His ex is in serious trouble.”

“Oh.” She dropped her voice. “Jamie hasn’t been here the last couple days.”

“He call out?”

“The last two days, yeah. But not today.”

I paced Morgan Turner’s pool room, wondering how to get more out of Debbie Prince.

“Have you sent anybody out to his place?”

“I haven’t told Mom and Dad. I didn’t want to get him in trouble.”

“Mom and Dad?”

She lowered her voice. “That’s what we call the two Vice Presidents.”

I laughed. “They are going to start asking questions sooner or later.”

“Yeah…” She was worried. Uncertainty for her boss clearly translated into uncertainty for her.

“Look, I need to talk to him anyway. If you just give me his address, I can kill two birds with one stone.”

She hesitated.

“Let me give you a number of a cop who can vouch for me. Detective Quick. Q-U-I—”

“Okay, I’ll give it to you.”

***

I went downtown first. I wanted to get a feel for the area, what the people were like. I couldn’t learn any of that from Turner’s breakfast and tea room. The one percent didn’t teach you much about the other ninety-nine percent.

I feared we were too close to Seattle for the coffee to be any good. But it was decent at the corner bakery attached to a row of antiquing shops I wouldn’t be caught dead in. I scarfed down a pathetically small and overcooked bagel with something that purported to be cream cheese. Everybody in the shop was talking about North Korea—they’d threatened to unleash the might of their malnourished army against the South again, and there was talk of a missile strike against the west coast of the United States.

I yawned in the news story’s general direction.

I sat outside on the nearest bench I could find. I wanted to think a little bit. There were no clouds in the sky. Maybe they weren’t bullshitting me about the rain shadow.

Stan called. “Eddie, I just found something.”

“About time you did, how much I’m paying you.”

“Last I checked, you owed me about five grand, partner.”

He was kidding, but it was true. He’d helped me out after I’d gotten in trouble with the law and when I was hanging my shingle. Lottery winner that he was, Stan was well-heeled and his daughter would never need to work a day in her life. He didn’t care I hadn’t paid him back and would never ask for the money anyway.

But it still hurt like hell.

“Eddie, I’m just ki—”

“I know, pal. But you’re right: I do owe you and I’ll pay you back.”

“Dude—”

“I don’t get a pass because you’re my friend and you’re rich. A man pays his debts.”

“When’d you grow a conscience?”

“Somewhere between the felony and this morning.”

I felt like someone was watching me. I turned around on the bench. There were a lot of people milling about, some on their way to work. I was about to go back to my call when I spotted them.

A few guys openly staring at me from outside the bakery.

“Eddie, you there?”

They gave me a real creepy feeling. “Yeah…what’d you find?”

“Before, I just got you the numbers on the cluster murders.”

A middle-aged guy with a walrus mustache was watching me with open hostility. I stood up and started moving.

“Uh-huh.”

“I didn’t look at the names until just now.”

Mustache and a couple fellow starers broke away from the pack and matched my pace. They weren’t coming to say hi. Menace filled their eyes. They were acting like I was their mortal enemy.

It was times like this I really wished I carried. Maybe I needed to get my PI license after all.

“Lemme guess.” I looked over my shoulder. My followers were gaining. “Mrs. Turner is one.”

“Go to the head of the class.”

“How’d she die? Was she disemboweled?”

“No…she was shot. And that’s a weird thing to ask me.”

They were ten paces behind me. The car was half a block away.

“Thanks, Stan. Listen, I literally have to run.”

“Eddie, what the hell’s going—”

I put my hand at the small of my back like I had a gun concealed there. Then I whirled to face Mustache and his two friends.

“Stop.”

They stopped. Nobody said anything. One of them had come from the same bakery as me. He was about my age and holding out a plastic knife. The look on his face scared me more than the plasticware.

I kept my right hand behind me. With my left I killed the call to Stan and started dialing 9-1-1.

“What do you assholes want?” I said.

Mustache chewed his lip.

Plasticware sneered. “We thought you were somebody else.”

“Who?”

“Somebody who’d make trouble,” Mustache added.

“I’ll make plenty of it, you keep following me.”

They weren’t scared. Time for a little bluff.

“One step closer and I’ll shoot all of you assholes.” I kept my right hand behind my back but pretended to pull out a gun.

They stared me down the whole way to my car.

***

I found Jamie Witherspoon’s place fifteen minutes later. It was one of those expensive high-rise condos that overlooks a man-made lake festering with goose shit and sits near a park with lots of trails where mud run assholes try to pretend they’re Neanderthals.

I ghosted my way into the lobby by following a resident and putting on the
I can’t find my keys
face. From there, I took the stairs to four and hung a left and found myself in front of Jamie’s door.

I knocked. I waited. Down the hall, a door squeaked open. A pair of eyes on an old face watched me.

I knocked again. The door down the hall slowly shut. As I was leaving, I heard somebody inside moving around.

“Who the hell’s there?”             

“I’m looking for Megan Turner.”

I sensed someone at the door. “I didn’t ask you that.”

“My name’s Eddie McCloskey. I’m working for her old man. She’s been gone for—”

The voice was edgy, nervous, going a million miles an hour. “Why’d you come to me? The police and the Feds have already been through here.”

The Feds?

Now I was intrigued.

“You were seen with her the day after she left Turner’s estate.”

Silence. I willed the lie to work, to make him open up.

“You should contact Ken Hernando.”

I repeated that name in my head.

“Who’s that?” I kept repeating the name. If I read a book or see a movie, I remember everything about it. Somebody mentions a name and it’s gone in fifteen seconds usually.

A longer silence.

“Who’s Ken Hernando?”

The deadbolt tumbled. The door opened toward me.

Jamie Witherspoon had seen better days. Better years, even.

He was late twenties according to Strongbow and physically fit according to my eyes, but he had an old face. He could have passed for late thirties. It reminded me of Morgan Turner. And of Chester Leonard. And of Melanie. Was there something in that Seattle coffee?

Jamie stood in the doorway in a bathrobe he hadn’t taken off for several days.

“What’s your name again?”

He didn’t really listen to my answer. When I was done, he poked his head a few inches out the door and peered down the hall in both directions.

Nobody was there.

He grabbed my sleeve and pulled me into his condo.

***

“Thanks for having me in.”

The condo was dark. The shades were closed in the living room. There was a light on in the bathroom down the hall. That was it.

The condo and Witherspoon were making me nervous. “You live alone?”

He didn’t answer the question. “You like knives?”

I was about to give him my knee-jerk answer. A knife had killed my brother. A knife had almost killed me.

But I thought better of saying all that. “Sure.”

He very slowly nodded as if fully weighing my answer and its veracity. We stood like that, five paces apart, in his ransacked-looking living room. My eyes adjusted to the gloom. I noticed a couple blades out on the coffee table. They were just kitchen knives, looked like an expensive set. But they had no business sitting unused on his coffee table.

“You’re looking for Megan?” he asked.

“Yeah. You two keep in touch?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think she likes knives.”

“Oh yeah?”

He didn’t answer. His eyes were jumping all over the place.

“She have a bad experience with a knife? Somebody cut her or something?”

He still didn’t answer.

“Listen, your office is looking for you,” I said. “Are you okay, pal? You want me to call somebody?”

“No! Don’t call anybody.” He started pacing and absently scratching his head.

“How about Ken Hernando, maybe I should call him?”

His eyes narrowed to slits. “I’ve already been to see him.”

“You have?” I decided to put some suspicion in my voice and challenge him a little bit.

Big mistake.

Displaying remarkable agility, Witherspoon grabbed a carving knife off the coffee table.

Lucky for me I’d taken up krav maga not so long ago.

In class we’d learned about the two types of knife fighters. One type goes for the kill first, second, and last, slashing and stabbing with reckless abandon. The other type, usually the more skilled, keeps you at bay with the blade, making small cuts and patiently waiting for his big opportunity.