A Ghoul's Guide to Love and Murder (21 page)

Quickly I got into a pair of sweats and rushed out to the kitchen. Gilley stood at the counter, serving Heath a huge omelet complete with hash browns and toast. My stomach grumbled. “Traitor,” I said looking down at it. Where was a good bout of morning sickness when I needed it?

“Hey!” Gilley said, spying me in the doorway. “You're finally up.”

I shuffled over to the kitchen and reached for a coffee cup. “Ah-ah,” Gil said. “No caffeine for you! I brought up some of Michel's green tea from downstairs. You can have a cup of that.”

I glared at Gilley. Hard. “Why're you so chipper?”

He held up his coffee mug and smiled meanly. “I've had my coffee.”

I was tired and cranky enough to kick him in the “coffee cups” but settled for snatching up the green tea and moving to the sink with my mug.

“Gil told me what happened,” Heath said. I felt the tension in my shoulders ratchet up another degree.

“Great,” I muttered.

“I didn't embellish,” Gil said. “I just gave him a few highlights. Like, I told him that the demon appeared while we were in the exhibit, but that we were packing so many magnets that it shrank back from us and we chased it all the way across the museum with our spikes before we saw it vanish, and then we saw a guy we couldn't identify leave the building out the back
door. That's when we found the door to Sullivan's office and let ourselves in.”

My grumpy mood lessened, and I offered Gilley a grateful smile. “Thanks for filling him in,” I said.

“Yeah, like I believe Gilley's version,” Heath scoffed.

I cleared my throat. “For once, Heath, Gil did not embellish.”

Heath considered me skeptically, and I knew he thought I was hiding something, but I wasn't about to elaborate. “Is that as far as you got in the telling of what happened last night, Gil?”

“No, I told him all the rest too.”

“Ah,” I said a little disappointed. “So, we're all up to speed.”

“Unless there's anything you want to elaborate on,” Heath said.

I took my brewed cup of green tea out of the microwave. “No. I think we're good.”

Gilley set a plate down at the counter and pointed to it. “Eat,” he ordered. “I made you a salmon, spinach, feta cheese omelet—all great pregnancy foods.”

I sat down next to Heath, ready to tuck into my omelet, but the smell of it hit me and in a moment I was running for the bathroom. As soon as I was done having my little bout of morning sickness, I wandered back to the counter, where both Gil and Heath were staring at me in alarm. “You okay, babe?” Heath asked.

“I am now,” I said, tucking into the omelet with gusto. I'd gone from totally nauseous to totally famished in about six seconds. Flat.

I ate with relish, consuming the entire two-egg
omelet almost without pause. When I was done I sighed contentedly and pushed my plate away, only to find Heath and Gilley once again staring wide-eyed at me. “What?”

“Nothing,” Heath said, averting his eyes to focus on his coffee.

Gilley inched forward and slowly removed my plate. “Thanks for leaving the china,” he snickered.

“I was hungry!” I snapped. Then I realized I'd spoken rather harshly. Lord, was I really going to turn into one of those pregnancy clichés? Feeling bad, I tried to form an apology, but my gaze landed on the remains of Heath's breakfast still on his plate. “You gonna finish that?”

He scooted the plate over to me with a chuckle. “Have at it, darlin'.”

I polished off Heath's breakfast, then had Gilley make me a smoothie. While I sipped at it, we discussed the case. “Are we really considering Rick Lavinia for this?” Heath asked me.

He had none of the same animosity for Rick that Gilley and I held. I'd thought Rick was a pompous jerk and disliked his “techniques,” and Gilley of course had gotten into it with him in their online feud, but Heath had always had a note of sympathy for Rick. Maybe it was a “bro” thing. “I honestly wasn't sold on him as the killer until I saw the photo on his Instagram of the Ashworth Commons,” I said. “That's just too big a coincidence for me. And, it'd be just like Rick to taunt us with something like that.”

“Did you see him at the exhibit the night of the premiere?” Heath asked.

“No,” I said. “But we were a little distracted, remember?”

“Yeah,” Heath said. “But if he was there, don't you think one of the fans would've noticed him? Rick's pretty recognizable.”

Rick was a good-looking guy, and he had very distinctive hair, black roots with white tips, and he wore it spiky. “He could've been wearing a hat or some kind of a disguise,” Gilley said. “I mean, our fans went to the exhibit looking for stuff related to us, and when you two showed up, they only had eyes for you. It wouldn't have been too difficult for him to blend in and go unnoticed if he put on glasses and a hat.”

“Plus,” I added, “Rick would know how to impersonate a Hollywood producer well enough not to raise Gilley's suspicions.”

Gil nodded enthusiastically. Using air quotes he said, “‘Bradley' really sold it with the name-dropping and studio-speak. He sounded legit.”

“Is Rick even in town, Gil?” Heath asked, obviously still skeptical.

“Olivera is going to check into it,” Gil said.

Which reminded me of something. “Were you able to trace the IP address for the person who logged into Sullivan's e-mail account?” I asked Gil.

He nodded. “Yes. It routed to an address here in Boston. I sent a text to Olivera to call me as soon as she got up, but she hasn't yet.”

That made me a little nervous. “We sent her home with plenty of magnets, right?”

“We did,” Gil assured me. “She's probably still sleeping, M.J. Don't worry. She'll call.”

I'd worry until she called, but I didn't say it. “What about Ayden?” I asked. “Have we been able to get in touch with him to see how he's doing?”

Gilley eyed his watch. “It's eight forty-five his time,” he said. “Think that's too early to call his hospital room?”

“Nah,” I said. “No one can sleep well in a hospital. Let's call.”

“Right,” Gil said, and pulled out his cell. After placing the call, he laid the smartphone on the counter and hit the speaker function.

“Hello?” a gravelly voice sounded after the third ring.

“Ayden?” I said. “It's M.J.”

“Hey, lady,” Ayden said. “You okay?”

“I'm better than you, apparently,” I told him, wishing he were closer so that we could visit him.

“Yeah, somebody got the drop on me,” he said. “The son of a bitch.”

“How're you feeling?” I asked.

“Great,” he deadpanned. “Never better.”

“We heard you had some cracked ribs and a punctured lung,” Gil said.

“Hey, Gilley,” Ayden said. “Yeah. The lung was just a small puncture. Doesn't even hurt anymore, but the son of a bitch really did a number on my ankle. It got
twisted up pretty good. They think I tore a ligament and they've been talking surgery all morning.”

I winced. As a runner, I knew that tearing a ligament was sometimes worse than breaking a bone. “Sorry to hear that, buddy,” Heath said.

“Is that Heath?”

“It is,” he said. “We're all here.”

“Wish I was there with you,” he said. “What's the word on the dagger?”

“It's still out there,” I said. “And someone has unleashed the kraken.”

“Oh, man,” he said. “I was afraid of that. Anybody hurt?”

Heath, Gilley, and I exchanged a pensive look. Finally I said, “No. Still only the one dead.”

“And you're all okay?”

“We are,” I said.

“Barely,” Gilley muttered.

“So Oruç's demon came after you,” Ayden said. He'd heard Gilley.

I shot Gil a stern look and said, “It did, but we handled it. The bigger problem we're dealing with right now, Ayden, is that Oruç has apparently opened up a portal big enough to let through at least some of the other spooks we've managed to shut down into the lower realms over the past few years. We've had encounters with three other nasties in just the past twenty-four hours.”

“Which ones?” Ayden asked. I'd forgotten that he'd been following our cable show for years.

“The Grim Widow, Hatchet Jack, and I'm fairly
certain another spook named Sy the Slayer paid me a visit two nights ago.”

“Plus Oruç's demon?”

“Yes,” I said.

Ayden sighed. “What a time to get mugged,” he said. “You guys need me and I'm stuck in this hospital bed.”

“I'm not sure what you could do here,” Gilley told him. “Except run for your life, and with that bum ankle . . .”

I shot Gilley another stern look.

“What?” he said.

I made a dismissive motion with my hand. “Anyway, Ayden, we think someone planned this whole thing starting about three weeks ago. It looks like the producer who called Gilley to arrange for the display of the dagger was an impostor. It also looks like there was at least some cooperation between the killer and the victim. We think we've found evidence of a five-thousand-dollar payoff in exchange for access to the exhibit hall to swap out all of Gilley's magnets, and that led to the killer having access to the alarm code that would let him come back to steal the dagger.”

“Were you able to trace where the payoff came from?”

“Yeah,” Gil said. “Some guy named Todd Tolliver. We're convinced it's an alias.”

There was silence on the other end of the line, and then Ayden said, “Son of a bitch.”

“What?” Heath and I said together.

“Just a little over three weeks ago I took a case
investigating a hit-and-run for a couple of parents who lost their nineteen-year-old son on his way home from Stanford. His name was Todd Tolliver.”

I blinked. We all did, taking that in for a second. “Did anybody know about the case you were working?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Ayden said. “Probably lots of people. I was able to track down the car and the person responsible, and the news did a story on it.”

“So if this guy knew about the case you were working on, Ayden, then maybe you weren't mugged at random. Maybe someone wanted to cause you permanent harm.”

“That's what I was just thinking, Heath,” Ayden said.

“He's playing with us,” I said. “Taunting us. He's letting us know that he's one step ahead of us at every turn. If we start digging, all we'll find are the many ways he's already outmaneuvered us.” I then explained to Ayden our theory about the killer and thief being Rick Lavinia.

“You know he called me not long after your show started, right?” Ayden said.

“Wait, what?” I said. “He's spoken to you?”

“Yeah. You two were credited with helping to solve the murders at the Drake Hotel, and I think Rick was looking for some dirt on you. He wanted to expose you as a couple of frauds, but he got nothing from me but high praise.”

“That's how he knew about the dagger!” Gilley said.
“He was researching the Drake murders and figured it out!”

Heath caught my eye. He offered me a look that suggested he apologized for being skeptical of Rick Lavinia as the primary suspect. “He probably wanted you out of the way, Ayden, because you would've remembered that phone call and probably pointed us right to him as a suspect.”

“Still,” Ayden said, “it doesn't explain how Rick stole the dagger, murdered Sullivan, then made it all the way to San Francisco to get the jump on me.”

“He had help,” I said. Then I turned to Gilley. “Hey, didn't you say that you spoke with Bradley's assistant a couple of times? Maybe he's part of this too.”

“The assistant was a woman, M.J.,” Gilley said.

“Ah,” I said. “Any chance the person who attacked you was a woman?”

“Maybe a woman gorilla,” Ayden said with a chuckle. “All I remember is getting hit by someone
big
.”

“Doesn't mean that Lavinia doesn't have more than one accomplice,” Heath pointed out.

“True,” Ayden said. “Still, that kind of thing takes money. Does he have the cash to support all this?”

I glanced at Heath and Gilley. They both shrugged. “We don't know, Ayden. Maybe?”

“It'd be worth checking out his financials, but you'd need a warrant to dig into them, and for that you'd need some pretty compelling evidence that Lavinia is your guy. Right now, I don't think you have enough,” Ayden said. It sounded like he was about to say more,
but at that moment there was the sound of other voices in the background. “Crap,” he said. “Listen, the doctor's here to talk about my ankle. I gotta go for now, but call me if anything new develops, okay?”

We promised we would and said our good-byes.

“I seriously think we should ditch this whole thing and go on an extended vacation,” Gil said into the stunned silence that followed.

Heath eyed him seriously. “If I thought that alone would keep us safe, Gil, I'd be the one buying our plane tickets.”

Gil's phone rang and I thought it might be Ayden again, but it turned out to be Olivera. “Did you have a chance to check out Rick Lavinia?” I asked her.

“I did,” she said. “But I don't have a lot of info. He's got one arrest on his record for a drunk and disorderly. He got that in Georgia last year, probably while filming for his show. I can't find an address for him in Boston; his last known here was three years ago, and there's someone else living in the apartment he once rented. If he owns property, it could be in a trust and I'd be unable to locate it unless I had the name of the trust, or, if he lives with someone, then the house could be in their name. His driver's license still lists the old address, though. The only point of contact for him is his agent, and when I reached out to him, all he'd tell me was that Rick was in town on an investigation which is supposedly a tightly guarded secret, and he was unwilling to share the address with me unless I had a subpoena or a warrant.”