Ghost Of A Chance Part 12

"I'll tell you what I was doing. I'll tell you once, because you're his wife...widow. But that's it, do you understand? I'm not saying anything else until I can talk to my lawyer." Meredith took a deep breath and ignored Savannah, who was plucking at his arm. "Jesus, stop looking at me like that!

Spider and I came down here to find a way out of this G.o.dforsaken house.

There wasn't room for us both to try to break down the door, so I stood back while Spider used the crowbar on it. While I was watching, someone sneaked up behind me and belted me on the head. That's the last thing I remember until Savannah started crying on me."

"Sounds fishy to me," Dad said.

Pixie nodded. "Totally."

I looked back toward the far wall. There were books everywhere, and a couple of boxes containing Christmas lights had been spilled, but I didn't see anything else. "What crowbar?"

"What crowbar? What do you mean 'what crowbar'? The crowbar Spider was using!"

"Meredith, you must calm down! Your blood pressure is probably sky-high by now," Savannah said, a pleading note in her voice.

"There's no crowbar here," I said, waving toward the door.

"What the h.e.l.l...? It was right there! Spider had it!"

"Maybe it's under his body," my father suggested. "I'll be happy to have a peek..."

"Don't touch anything!" Adam called from the other side of the room.

"My captain is going to be screaming at me as is."

"Then a little more won't hurt, will it?" Before anyone could stop him, Dad pushed Spider up on his side. "Nope, no crowbar."

"It must be there!" Meredith raged. "I saw him with it! He was using it to pry open the d.a.m.ned door!"

"Well, it's gone now," I said slowly.

"Someone must have taken it!"

"Yes," I said. He looked ready to explode, his face red and slightly sweating. I wondered if he had a bad heart.

Adam, finished with his call, came over to us just in time to catch the flash of anger in Meredith's eyes. "We need to preserve what's left of the crime scene.

We'll go upstairs, where we can talk about this quietly."

"I'd just like to know what sort of game you people are playing with me!"

Meredith snarled before marching resolutely up the stairs, Savannah hot on his heels. Dad took Pixie's arm and followed them. I stood over Spider's body for a moment. So many deaths, so much sadness and sorrow. With each death, the world changed a little bit, and those of us who were left to deal with the consequences could only stand by and wonder what the future held. I sent a little prayer before slowly walking toward the stairs.

Adam was waiting for me. "The captain said we need to clear this up before we call in the mundane police."

"We?" I asked, not surprised that the Otherworld police force would want things straightened out before the mortal world became involved. The "we,"

however, took me by surprise.

"Yes. I told them who you were. The captain said that as long as you weren't a suspect, I could deputize you to help investigate the murder. Consider yourself as having the official blessing."

"We have a little more than ten hours to make things perfectly clear."

"Yes." His gaze was as somber as mine probably was. "Think we can do it?"

I bit my lower lip as I looked at him. He seemed to me to be a competent man, and a fair one. I believed that he really did want to see justice done. But there was so much at stake, and so little time to put things right..."There's a murderer to bring to justice. I don't think we have a choice but to do it."

He nodded, stopping me as I was about to go up the stairs. "I have to ask this: where were you for the last hour?"

10.

I will admit that my response to Adam's surprising question was to gape at him openmouthed. "Didn't you just say I wasn't a suspect?"

"This is to satisfy me. You're an officer of the Akas.h.i.+c League, and I'm fully willing to deputize you, but first I need to hear where you were, and what you were doing."

"I suppose that's fair. Let's see ... I went upstairs earlier with a bad headache. Spider came with me, just to argue, as it turned out. I was feeling sick, and after I started vomiting, he left. I went to the bathroom to clean up, tried to relax on the bed, and finally gave up. Do you really think I would murder Spider?"

"Not really," he answered, shaking his head. "You're a smart woman. I a.s.sume if you wanted to knock off your husband, you'd do so in a much more elegant manner."

I smiled at that. "That's a backhanded compliment if I've ever heard one, but sadly, it's true. If I were planning Spider's murder, I would use an untraceable poison, and have a roomful of people to give me an alibi, not be throwing up by myself. Do you believe Meredith?"

"Do you?" He gestured for me to continue up the stairs.

"I don't know." I gave a half shrug. "He seems earnest, but there was no one else down here with Spider. If not Meredith, then who?"

"That's what I intend to find out. We'll talk to everyone separately, and hopefully come to a conclusion before I have to call in the local police."

Just as we reached the top of the stairs, a small rustling noise behind us had me freezing. Horror skittered up my spine.

"What the...Did you hear that?" Adam asked in a whisper.

I turned to look back at the bas.e.m.e.nt. "Yes. Are there rodents down here?"

"No."

The age-old fear of the unknown kept my feet planted firmly on the stairs as Adam ran down them and stalked across the length of the bas.e.m.e.nt to stop next to a hulking, antiquated oil furnace.

"All right, you can come out. We know you're hiding back there."

For a moment silence greeted his command, then the hairs on my arm stood on end as a shadowy form separated itself from the depths behind the furnace. My breath came out in a gush as the figure stepped into the dim light.

"For G.o.d's sake, you just about gave me a heart attack," Adam growled.

The woman who stood before him turned frightened eyes on me. "Are you going to let her destroy us the way that other spirit was destroyed?"

Amanita asked in a breathy voice.

Poor thing. She looked scared half to death. I held my hands wide, to show I meant no harm. "Of course he's not. I wouldn't have destroyed you even if I had gone ahead with the cleaning; I'd just have moved you to somewhere safe. Sergei's death was ..." I avoided looking at the blanket-covered mound. "It was not my doing."

"What the h.e.l.l are you doing hiding down here?" Adam asked, his voice rough, but with an undertone of concern that warmed my still-numb heart.

"I didn't want the exterminator to find me. Tony said we had to hide really well so she wouldn't take us like the man who took the domovoi. So I hid down here, behind the furnace."

Adam's gaze touched mine before turning back to her. "Did you see or hear anything while you were hiding?"

I had heard that unicorns, by nature, were rather skittish. And who could blame them? Their entire history was filled with persecution by mortals who believed they held the key to immortality. Amanita seemed typical of her people, shy and easily startled. Her face was white, her large gray eyes resembling those of a startled fawn. But it was her voice-a whisper filled with unspoken horror-that had me putting an arm around her in sympathy. To my relief, she didn't pull away from me.

"There were voices. The man named Spider came. And the other one. I hid."

"Did you see anything?" Adam repeated.

She shook her head, leaning into me, s.h.i.+vers racking her body. I wondered if she was suffering from shock. "No. But it was frightening. The two men were talking about leaving, then there was a funny noise, like a struggle, and Spider said something about things being all his when the other one was gone. Then nothing. I was too afraid to come out."

"He said what?" Adam asked.

Amanita looked even more frightened. "I don't remember!"

"You do too. Think, Nita. This is important. What exactly did Spider say before it went quiet?"

She wrung her hands together, her face so pale I thought she would pa.s.s out.

"Maybe we should do this another time," I murmured.

"No," Adam said, shaking his head. He spoke calmly, his eyes intense but his voice soft as he took Amanita's hands in his. "She can do this. Think back to that moment, Nita. What did the two men say?"

She swallowed a couple of times, clearly trying to focus. "The one said he didn't think they could get out. Spider said, 'I'll be d.a.m.ned if I stay here any longer.' Then there were the struggling sounds, and Spider said ... I think he said, 'It'll all be mine when you're gone.' Or something like that."

"Who was he talking to, did he say?" Adam asked.

"No. No one said anything else, I swear!"

Adam made her go over the brief conversation a couple more times, but she insisted that was all she had heard. She was becoming more and more distraught with each pa.s.sing moment, however.

Adam opened his mouth to say something else, caught my eye, and simply told Amanita to go upstairs to the kitchen to wait for the other spirits. "We'll talk to you again a little later."

She nodded and hurried off.

"All right, she's gone. Now, why did you give me a look that practically yelled an objection?" Adam asked.

"She was about ready to have a nervous breakdown. Even you must have seen she was nearly frightened out of her wits. It would have been cruel to press her further."

"She's always frightened about something. She's a unicorn! Haven't you ever been around them?"

"Not really, no."

"They've been hunted for centuries, with the end result being that they stay mainly to themselves. They don't like strangers, loud noises, or crowds,"

Adam said.

"That's understandable, but this wasn't normal fear. I think she needs some time to pull herself together."

He gave me a gentle push up the stairs. "Did it occur to you at all that you might have had me send a murderer off on her own?"

"A murderer!" I stopped at the top of the stairs and looked down on him.

He shooed me forward, clicked off the light, and locked the bas.e.m.e.nt door.

"Amanita? You can't be serious! She's your own ward!"

"I am very serious, and I know who she is. She was down there with him-what's to stop her from bas.h.i.+ng Meredith on the head, and killing Spider?"

I shook my head. "I can't believe you'd think that about someone who looks to you for protection. She's not at all the type to kill someone. Even if she could-and I don't think a woman would have the strength to strangle Spider-there's no earthly reason why she should want him dead. She hadn't even met him!"

"They all knew Spider destroyed your domovoi."

I remembered the horrible pain that had seemed to radiate from the h.e.l.lish machine Spider had used. "I imagine every spirit in a five-mile radius knew one of their own kind had been destroyed. But she didn't know Spider."

"No. But she must have known that what he did once, he could do again-to any of them." Adam's voice was grim. I knew it must be causing him no little amount of pain to have to consider his own charges as suspects.

"I just don't think it's likely. She's shy and not at all aggressive." I gave a little smile. "This is very strange-me defending your own people to you.

When it comes right down to it, Pixie is more of a suspect than Amanita. She didn't like Spider, is demonstrably volatile, and has polter strength, but you don't see me trying to suggest her as the murderer."

Adam paused at the door, giving me an odd look. "I haven't forgotten your moody teen."

I gawked in surprise for a moment before regaining my composure.

"What do you think about what Amanita said?"

"I think I'm going to have to talk to Meredith."

"Agreed."

"But first..." Adam entered the living room. Savannah strode about, waving her arms and declaring that she would never make contact with the other side if so much negative energy was continuously trapped in the house. "I can't believe someone would murder Mr. Marx just when we're poised to explore the unknown. Don't they know how harmful a violent crime like this can be to one's psychic receptors? And then there's the circ.u.mambulation. How is that going to be performed if we're all trapped here?"

"It is extremely inconsiderate of someone," I agreed before I fully realized what she'd said.

"What the h.e.l.l is circ.u.mwhatever?" her husband asked as he slammed down a drink he'd poured himself from the sideboard. He glared at everyone from his armchair, as if daring someone to object.

Savannah blushed under the attention of everyone in the room and made pretty little fl.u.s.tered gestures with her hands. "Oh, I ... it's something I read about. It has to do with people dying, doesn't it? It's a ceremony or something?"

"Something like that." I watched her for a moment, then raised my eyebrows slightly at my father. He looked suspicious.