“I had no idea Lucien had that kind of money.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, reaching for my glass of wine.
“Maybe that’s why he was murdered.”
“For his money?”
Calvin nodded.
I sipped some pinot and pondered his suggestion. Honestly, I didn’t know why I hadn’t considered that aspect of the situation before this, except that when someone was in Lucien’s line of work, you tended to think any foul play had to be supernatural in nature. It wouldn’t be the first time someone who’d dabbled in the wrong kind of spells or messed with the wrong entity met a nasty — and untimely — end. Honestly, that made a lot more sense than thinking fragile little Violet Clarke had anything to do with his death.
“Who was Lucien’s heir?” Calvin inquired next.
Good question. “I’m not sure,” I said slowly. “I mean, Athene was his right-hand woman, so you’d think he’d leave something to her, but I don’t know that. He didn’t have any children. His parents are still alive, and he has a younger brother, but I don’t think they were close.”
“Still,” Calvin said, “it’s a line of inquiry I’d better look into. Money’s often a very powerful motive.”
I couldn’t argue with that, not when the majority of my clients had wanted me to use my powers of divination to see if their futures would be prosperous, if I could guide them to deals or investments or opportunities that would help fatten their wallets. Of course, I also had many clients who wanted to know about their love lives or their health, but money always seemed to come first.
“Definitely,” I agreed. I hesitated for a second, then decided I’d better go ahead and ask the question anyway. “So…am I still a suspect?”
“Do you think I’d be having dinner with you if you were?”
When he put it that way….
Relief spread through me, even as I asked, “Then why are you having the lab check my knives?”
“Because that way I can show I did my due diligence,” he said. “It was always a long shot. I can tell you’re not a murderer.”
“Thanks…I guess.”
His eyes crinkled in amusement, and he took a bite of his drumstick before setting it back down. “And I’m not getting that vibe from Athene, either, which is why I told her it was all right to head back to L.A. Of course, with my two main suspects ruled out, that means I’m back to square one.”
Yes, that was kind of a problem. But I was glad he hadn’t tried to take the easy way out by pinning the murder on the likely suspects — not only because I really didn’t want to be arraigned for first-degree murder, but because it also told me Calvin Standingbear was a man with integrity.
After some of my experiences in Los Angeles, that was a welcome change.
Dinner wended down after that. I hadn’t had time to bake anything, and so I didn’t have much to offer for dessert except some rocky road ice cream I’d bought at Walmart. He declined, saying he wasn’t into sweets.
And then came the awkward after-dinner moment as we both got up from the table. Calvin helped me take the dishes into the kitchen, and then we both turned and looked at each other.
“Thanks for dinner,” he said. “It was really nice to have some home cooking.”
“Any time,” I managed. My heart was beating irrationally fast, and I told it to chill out. There was no reason to believe this dinner would end with anything more than a simple goodbye, with maybe a promise that he’d be back to return my knives to me once the lab was done with them.
He paused, gazing down into my face. “You’re making this really hard for me,” he said.
“I am?”
“I think you know that. In general, I don’t have dinner with murder suspects.”
“I thought you said I wasn’t a suspect.”
“True. It’s just….” The words trailed off, and he shook his head. “This isn’t where I’d intended to be.”
“Me, neither,” I said. “Globe, that is.”
The image of the Lovers card from my Tarot deck flashed into my mind. Back in L.A. when I’d pulled that card, I’d wondered if it meant I had some kind of love life waiting for me in Arizona. Now, with the way Calvin stared down into my face, the intensity in those night-dark eyes of his, I thought maybe the universe was just about to prove to me that, once again, it had been right.
And I was more than fine with that. I’d been waiting longer than I wanted to admit for the right man to cross my path.
Calvin’s phone buzzed in his pocket, and he started, backing away from me slightly. “I’ll need to take this,” he said, tone apologetic but also somehow relieved, as if he was glad of the interruption.
“Sure,” I replied, my tone resigned.
Thanks, universe.
He lifted the phone to his ear. “Standingbear here.” At once, his expression went almost too still, as if he was trying his best to keep me from guessing what might be passing through his mind. “Yes. Got it. I’ll be right there.”
Well, he had warned me he was always on call, although I wanted to groan at the timing of this one. If it had come through even a minute later….
“Is something wrong?” I asked.
Calvin nodded, expression stony. “I’m afraid so. That was Ned, one of my deputies. Athene Kappas was just killed in a car crash.”
13
The Hand of Fate
Lights flared blue and red along the steep slopes that rose above Highway 60 as it wound its way out of town to the west. The ambulance was already here, although there was no point in taking poor Athene to the hospital. Her body lay on a gurney behind the ambulance, covered in a sheet, thank the Goddess. To one side stood Travis Cox, Globe’s on-and-off-again Uber/Lyft driver.
“I don’t know what happened, man,” he said. He was a gangly guy maybe ten years older than me, with sandy hair and a scrubby beard and the slightly unfocused gaze of someone who liked to smoke a lot of weed in his spare time. “It’s, like, something just grabbed hold of the car and rolled it.”
Cold trickled down my spine. I thought once again of my worries back at the apartment, that something supernatural was at work here, leaving a trail of death in its wake.
Calvin stood next to Chief Lewis, both men clearly not thrilled at the prospect of having to work together. Technically, this stretch of road was in Lewis’s jurisdiction, since it lay within Globe’s town limits, but because Athene had been part of the investigation into Lucien Dumond’s death, Calvin was also involved.
And that meant the two police departments had to work together.
Calvin had brought me along because I begged him. No, I’m not proud of that, but the instant I heard Athene was dead, I knew something hinky had to be going on. Luckily, he agreed that my witchy insights might be of some use, although he warned me to stay out of the way.
“I’m going to tell Lewis that you’re there because you’re a friend of the victim and her only advocate in town, but you still need to make sure you don’t interfere with anything,” he said.