A Ghoul's Guide to Love and Murder (24 page)

And just like that—she vanished.

For many moments afterward, no one moved. Gil and I simply stared at Heath, whose chest was heaving and posture was stiff like that of a great warrior after a tremendous battle. He looked down to where the Widow had been, as if daring her to make a reappearance, but the change in atmosphere was so distinct that I knew he'd sent her back, somehow, to the lower realms.

“What. The hell. Was
that
?” Olivera said from the top of the stairs.

All three of us turned to stare up at her. She was looking down at us, but also all around the stairwell. “
That
, Detective, was my husband,” I said, my heart bursting with pride and relief and even joy.

Heath smiled sideways at me as he came up the stairs. He was bleeding from a few various scratches, and the bandage covering his wound had come off, exposing his stitches and a little blood there too.

He reached us and came right to me; cupping my head with his hand, he said, “Are you okay?”

I nodded at first, but then shook my head and started crying big wet tears and tried to brush them
off. “Pregnancy hormones,” I said with a forced chuckle while wiping my cheeks.

The truth was, I was moved beyond words. Heath was this magnificent creature, this thing of absolute beauty, grace, and power. He was also kind, and good, and thoughtful, and sweet. He took care of me in a thousand ways, little and big. He understood me like no one else could, and shared an intuitive talent so rare that it set us apart from almost every single person we knew. And this magnificent person was mine.

He was just . . . mine.

I loved him with a magnitude that felt greater than something that could ever be quantified. It filled me and lifted me and moved me to tears that I couldn't hide and I couldn't stop. They dribbled down my cheeks and my lip trembled and I had a hard time looking up at him because it almost hurt to feel that much for anyone.

“Aw, babe,” he said, throwing down the spike in his hand to cup my face with both of his. “I know. Me too.” And then he kissed me, and I shed myself in that moment. I left behind M. J. Holliday, the tough, serious, fiercely independent single person who just happened to be married, and I became half of something so much bigger and a thousand times more powerful.

And then Gilley cleared his throat. “Geez, you guys. Get a room.”

Heath laughed and then so did I. He pulled me into his arms and held me tight, and so much of the past few minutes already felt more distant.

I heard Olivera's shoes on the stairs and I lifted my
head from Heath's chest. “I'm glad you guys are having a laugh,” she said, “but we've got a problem.”

I sighed. “I know. We haven't gotten the dagger back yet.”

She seemed puzzled by my response and pointed up. “No,” she said. “Him.”

With a jolt I remembered Murdock, and I lifted my gaze to the fourth floor, where the security guard's lifeless body was still pressed up against the railing.

“Crap,” Gil said. “What the hell are we gonna do about him?”

“You'll have to call it in,” I said.

“And say what, exactly?” Olivera asked me. “That after chasing a person of interest in the murder of Phil Sullivan into an abandoned building, I found him murdered by a ghost?”

I squinted up and took note of the blood on Murdock's torso. “It might not have been the Widow who murdered him,” I said, letting go of Heath to start heading up the stairs. “Her modus operandi is to strangle or drown her victims. She usually doesn't draw blood.”

We ascended to the fourth floor without speaking. Although the air was no longer thick with a sinister essence, we were still mindful that a person had been murdered, and that carried its own solemn energy.

I was the first to reach Murdock, but I didn't touch him. No one did. Well, except for Olivera, who checked him for a pulse and then stepped back to look over his body for several moments, eventually leaning over the
railing to get a better look at the wounds on his chest. “He's been stabbed.”

“I was afraid of that,” I said. “If he's been stabbed, then it probably wasn't a spook who did it.”

Olivera pointed down the stairwell. “That freak show looked like she could wield a knife,” she said.

“I don't think she would've,” Heath said. “Like M.J. said, the Widow prefers snapping necks, or strangling or drowning her victims. And even if she had murdered him, then why didn't she use the blade against us?”

Olivera frowned and scanned the ground around Murdock's body again. “No sign of the weapon,” she said.

“You won't find it here,” I told her.

“How do you know?”

“Because the killer took it with him, and I'm guessing the weapon he used to kill Murdock was Oruç's dagger.”

“So Murdock wasn't our guy?” Gilley said.

“It doesn't look that way,” I replied.

“Then how was he involved?” Heath asked.

“The same way Sullivan was probably involved. Another accomplice. If the IP address led back to Murdock's house, then the killer could've asked to use Murdock's Wi-Fi, right, Gil?”

Gilley nodded. “Yes. Easily.”

“What I can't figure out,” I said next, “is why he thought to come here after Sullivan was murdered. I mean, he headed right for this place like he knew the killer was hiding out here.”

“I'm guessing he came to warn the killer,” Gilley said.

“There's one problem with all of this,” Olivera said. “I checked Murdock's accounts today after you guys gave me the address, and it came back to the one Murdock listed when we interviewed him. He's got fifteen hundred between his checking and his savings accounts and nothing deposited other than his biweekly paycheck.”

I thought about that for a minute and remembered the old woman from the house where Murdock had pulled up. If Murdock really did live there, could that old woman have been his mother? “Chris, I think you should do another search on the financials for the woman Murdock was living with. If that was his mother, he could've easily set it up with the killer to deposit it in one of her accounts to avoid exactly this type of suspicion.”

Olivera nodded. “You're right,” she said. “I'll look into it, but we still need to decide what to do with Murdock's body. I mean, I
have
to call it in, and given the encounters we've had here in just the past two days, I'm not sure I want to risk a paramedic's life when he comes to collect the body.”

“You should all be safe for a little while, Detective,” Heath said. “There's no threat to you or anyone else here right now.”

“How can you be sure?”

Heath pointed to the top of the stairs next to us. There, lying in plain sight, as if it'd been there all along, was a large snowy white feather. “Where did
that come from?” Olivera asked, looking up and around as if she expected to see a bald eagle hanging out on the banister.

“My ancestors set it there,” Heath said simply. “And they're going to keep us all safe until we get out of here. But I'd make that call soon. Their protective energy can't be sustained indefinitely.”

•   •   •

Olivera cleaned up all the shell casings expelled from her gun from the day before. Then she made the call and tried to get us to leave so that nobody would ask us too many questions. “No,” Heath told her firmly after she all but insisted. “If I leave, so does your protection. We'll hang out downstairs, Detective, but I'm not leaving you alone in this building.”

She relented, and I swore I saw relief in her eyes.

Still, I felt I had to leave before anyone arrived. I was away for about two hours, after making an emergency appointment with my ob-gyn, who, luckily, was only fifteen minutes away.

She'd been my doctor for more than ten years, so she'd seen me covered in bruises before and knew the type of job I had sometimes got a little physical. This time, I was much more worried about the baby after that tumble down the stairs, but after she'd checked me over thoroughly and performed an ultrasound, she said the baby was just fine. Still, she did make the suggestion that perhaps for the next seven and a half months I should probably find a new line of work.

I took the printout of the baby—no bigger than a bean!—back to show Heath, but when I got back to the
building, which still had a number of crime scene techs there working, Heath was in a sort of deep meditation up on the second floor. Choosing not to disturb him, I went in search of Gilley, who filled me in on the details of what'd happened while I was gone. “Some other detective—I think his name was Smith—showed up,” he said. “But Olivera was able to deflect attention off us and back onto the dead guy. Then the medical examiner showed up and I overheard him say that whoever had stabbed Murdock to death had probably done it by taking him by surprise.

“He also said,” Gilley continued, “that the first wound was to Murdock's stomach, which he thought meant the killer had hidden the weapon, moved in close, and stabbed Murdock, who then fell to his knees and then was stabbed several more times on his way down to the floor. The ME said that all he could really tell was that the killer was right-handed.”

“That's not much to go on,” I said. “Is Rick Lavinia right-handed?”

Gil pressed his lips together. “No,” he said. “I already checked while you were gone. Rick's a leftie.”

“Dammit,” I swore. “Well, that doesn't mean he didn't stab him with his other hand. Maybe he had something else in his left hand and used it to distract Murdock while he stepped in close and stabbed him.”

“Maybe,” Gilley said, but he sounded skeptical.

We fell silent then, waiting for everyone to finish up. I wasn't sure what Olivera had said to her peers to allow us to remain in the building while they
investigated the crime, but when I'd gotten back to the building, all I'd had to do was tell the beat cop standing guard at the entrance my name and that I was with Olivera, and he'd let me head inside.

Around us the techs were starting to clean up and pack up their cameras, evidence bags, et cetera, and my gaze traveled back to Heath, who was leaning against the wall with his eyes closed and a serene expression. “He's been like that since you left,” Gil mumbled out of the side of his mouth.

“He's meditating,” I told him. “He's helping his ancestors hold the energy here.”

“What do you think will happen to this place when we leave?” Gil said next.

I looked around the hallway we were in, brightly lit by the police spotlights, and thought about the absence of all that energy. “I think it'll go straight back to hell, Gil.”

It took another half hour for the police to wrap it up. Still, by that time, beads of sweat had broken out on Heath's forehead and he'd visibly paled. When I pulled him out of the deep meditation he was in, he actually had trouble walking.

We got him to the car and Olivera told us she was headed over to the house where Murdock lived. She wanted to talk to the old lady.

“We'll call you later,” I said as I got into the car next to Heath in the backseat.

“Great,” she said. “Stay safe, M.J.,” she added, and I smiled. We were turning into friends after all.

We headed out, and Gilley drove while I sat with Heath's head in my lap, and in moments he was asleep.

I felt bad that I had to wake him once we got to the condo. He shuffled inside and went straight to bed. I
knew he'd be all right, but still, it was hard to see him so drained.

After making sure Heath was settled, I came back out into the living room to find Gilley on the sofa just staring at the floor, as if in a trance. “Gil?” I said a bit warily. He'd once been possessed by Sy the Slayer, and my heart ticked up a beat, wondering if the evil spook had once again entered my home.

But Gil simply sighed and said, “I'm so tired of this, M.J. I'm so sick of battling things that shouldn't even exist. They're worse than my worst nightmares, and they give my worst nightmares fuel.”

I went over to sit next to him and took his hand. “If I thought that sending you to New York to hang with Michel until this thing was over was the answer, Gil, I would've done that on day one.”

He squeezed my hand. “I know,” he said. “But I'm talking about more than just right now. I never, ever want to do this again.”

I swallowed the lump that formed in my throat. “You're moving after the wedding,” I told him. “And Heath and I are retiring from ghostbusting.”

He turned his head to smile sadly at me. “That's just it,” he said. “You and Heath can't seem to help yourselves. You guys get embroiled in these things like there's a target on your back that only evil spooks can see, and because I love you, I come running to help. I don't know how to say no to you the next time you guys need me on some bust that you pinkie-swear is the last one you'll ever do.”

I bit my lip. That stung. Mostly because he was
absolutely right, even though in this instance, it was mostly Gil's fault. “Gil,” I said. “It's different now.”

“How is it different, M.J.?”

I put my free hand on my belly. “
I'm
different,” I said. “Literally. And when my daughter comes into this world, she'll be my greatest vulnerability. Some demon is gonna figure that out someday and go for her. The
only
way I can protect her is to say no the next time some evil spook is causing all sorts of trouble and my phone rings with a plea for help.”

“But, sugar, how're you even going to avoid going to their aid? I mean, it's almost like you've had a beacon on your back everywhere you go, and evil spooks seem to abound here in Boston.” Gilley stared at me as if he was pleading with me to keep my word.

I swallowed again, but this time for courage. “Gil . . . Heath and I are moving to Santa Fe. We'll be close to his family. His tribe. And his ancestors, and today you saw how effective they are at intervening. They'll protect us, and they'll protect Madelyn when she's born.”

Gil's eyes misted some more. “You're moving to Santa Fe?”

“Yes.”

“How soon?”

“Right after your wedding.”

Gil's face registered a series of expressions that each broke my heart. “How come you didn't tell me?”

My own lip trembled, and in a quavering voice I said, “I didn't know how. You've been with me as my best friend . . . my brother since I was eleven. How do I tell someone I love so much, who's so important to
me, and who's been such a part of my life all these years, that I'm heading to the other side of the country?”

Gilley looked down at our joined hands. “I felt like I was betraying you when Michel and I made the decision to move to New York.”

“I know
exactly
what you mean.”

We were silent like that for a while, just holding hands and tearing up. It's like there were no words to describe how much we loved each other, and how much we'd meant to each other, and how very much we'd miss each other. Finally, I broke the silence by saying, “We're planning on building a guesthouse, you know.”

Gil looked up at me hopefully. “Yeah?”

“Yes. It'd be a real favor to me if you'd come and decorate it once it's complete.”

His brow rose a little more. “I can come to visit a lot, you know. Especially if you need help with the baby.”

I let go of his hand to wrap my arms around him and hug him fiercely. “I'm counting on it, sweetie. I'm counting on it.”

•   •   •

Late in the afternoon Heath shuffled out of the bedroom, still looking drained and exhausted. I patted the seat next to me on the sofa as Gilley busied himself in the kitchen cooking up a storm.

I'll hand it to Gil: He's one hell of a good cook, and he was making us a feast of salmon tacos with homemade pico de gallo and guacamole. The scents coming
from the kitchen were mouthwatering. “Smells great, Gil,” Heath said, plopping down on the sofa next to me.

Gil picked his head up at the sound of Heath's voice. “Oh, good. You're up. Dinner in ten minutes, people.”

My stomach gurgled. I was insanely hungry. Heath raised an eyebrow at the sound. “Wow. Our kid's loud for someone so small.”

I chuckled. “Yeah. She's pretty gabby.”

“How're you feeling?” he asked me, stroking my arm affectionately.

“A little sore, but no real damage done.”

“You sure?”

“I'm sure,” I said, thinking of the printout of our little bean in my messenger bag. I decided to show him that when we were alone. “The doc says the baby is okay, and everything looks good. I'm scheduled for a follow-up in two weeks.” Squeezing his knee, I added, “How're you feeling?”

He rubbed the side of his head that hadn't been grazed by the bullet. “I think she knocked some sense into me,” he said with a grin.

“Oh, yeah?” I chuckled. “What kind of sense is that?”

“That we need to get out of the ghostbusting business. It hurts too much.”

I laughed again. “I was just saying that to Gilley a little earlier. What I don't understand is how the hell these spooks are overcoming our magnets so easily. I mean, the Grim Widow was freakishly strong today,
and by rights she shouldn't have been able to attack us like she did. I mean, she held on to me as we rolled down the stairs, and I was covered in magnets.”

“I spoke with my ancestors about that in my meditation,” Heath said. “Whitefeather told me that the dagger itself had gained a considerable amount of power as a portal. He said that there was something amplifying its energy, but he couldn't tell what.”

From the kitchen Gilley said, “I think I might know.”

I hadn't thought he'd been listening. “What, Gil?”

He wiped his hands on a kitchen towel and came around the counter to us. “To magnetize or demagnetize something you need a charge. Electricity. When you demagnetize something, you change the electromagnetic frequency around the object. So, in theory, if our thief stole the dagger and placed an improvised demagnetizer on it with, say, a battery pack to supply the power, you'd be amping up the wattage of whatever spook came through that portal in a big, bad way.”

“Wow,” I said. “That's not good.”

“Nope,” Gil said, turning to go back to the kitchen. “And you know what else isn't good?”

“What?”

“The fact that I need a little help here and neither one of you has volunteered.”

Heath and I smiled at each other and he began to get up but I pushed him down. “Sit. I'll help bridezilla.”

“I heard that!” Gil snapped.

Ignoring him, I said to Heath, “You rest and I'll bring dinner to you.”

With my help, we had a hearty meal ready within the next five minutes, and we'd no sooner settled ourselves comfortably in the living room with full plates balanced on our laps than the doorbell rang.

I think the three of us sighed collectively. “I'll get it,” I said with a groan.

Setting my plate on the ottoman, I got up and answered the door. Chris Olivera stood there looking nearly as exhausted and worn-out as Heath. “Hi, M.J.,” she said.

“Chris. Good to see you. Please come in.”

She came into the kitchen and immediately stopped in her tracks. “I'm interrupting your dinner,” she said. “I can come back.”

“No, no,” I said. “Would you like to join us? There's plenty.”

I heard Gilley clear his throat, but I ignored him. I knew I'd be giving away his chance for seconds, but Chris was on our side now, and there was no sense being rude to her.

She licked her lips but held up her hand. “No, that's really nice of you, but I don't want to impose.”

I waved her comment off. “Oh, please,” I said. “It's fish tacos. Gilley made them and I can tell you from experience, they're amazing. Go sit in the living room
and take the plate on the ottoman. I'll bring you a glass of iced tea, and I'll fix myself another plate.”

Chris wavered for another moment, so I just got right to making myself another plate, and she took the cue and headed to the living room.

I joined her there with the last of the fish tacos and ignored Gilley's barely veiled frown. “Oh, my God,” Chris said after she'd taken a bite. “These
are
amazing!”

Gilley's frown vanished, and thereafter he was the epitome of the polite host, offering Chris extra helpings of guacamole and pico de gallo.

We ate without discussing anything about the case, which I think was an unspoken agreement among us. It was an unnerving topic, and no sense spoiling a delicious meal with talk of death and mayhem.

Finally, though, we'd finished the meal and Chris politely took each of our plates to the kitchen, then came back and sat down. Folding her hands in her lap, she said, “I looked into Murdock. The elderly woman he lived with was his mother. He had power of attorney over her finances, and when we looked into her bank account, we discovered a pattern almost identical to Sullivan's. Five grand deposited about two weeks ago, but he got an additional five grand the day after Sullivan was murdered.”

“Do you think he murdered Sullivan?” Gilley asked.

She shook her head and shrugged. “My gut says no.”

“Did you find any link between Rick Lavinia and Murdock?” I asked next.

Chris shook her head. “No. Murdock's mother wasn't exactly a fountain of information. She thinks we murdered her son.”

“Yikes,” I said. “Is that going to spell trouble for you, Chris?”

She shrugged again. “I spent a lot of the afternoon going over the incident with Internal Affairs. They don't like the fact that I chased a suspect into an abandoned building, and, out of my line of sight, he was murdered by an unknown assailant who then got away.”

“Are you still on the case?” Heath asked.

“Yeah. For now,” she said wearily.

He considered her for a few moments before he said, “Your dad was a cop too, right?”

She blinked in surprise. “How'd you know that?”

“You guys share the same first name,” he said without answering her directly. “He's really proud that you're carrying on the legacy. He also thinks that the move to the new house in Cambridge was terrific. He's glad your mom didn't talk you out of it.”

In an instant, Chris's eyes glistened with tears. “How are you doing that?” she said breathlessly.

Heath smiled kindly at her. “It's what I do. Your dad is asking for a favor, Chris. He'd like you to make his mom's pasta dish. He keeps showing me a bowl of spaghetti and he keeps connecting it to the number twenty-four.”

She barked out a laugh and wiped her cheeks, which were now wet with tears. “His birthday is on the twenty-fourth of this month, and my
grandmother's spaghetti Bolognese was his absolute favorite dish. He used to tell me that I was the only person who could make it like she did.”

“I thought it was something like that,” Heath said. “Anyway, he's really, really proud of you. And he says that you're smart to keep yourself in such great shape. He says you learned from his mistakes, and by that I think he means that he didn't take great care of himself. He died from heart trouble, right?”

Chris's lower lip trembled and she put her index finger against it to stop the quivers. Unable to speak, she simply nodded. My heart went out to her, because she clearly missed her dad, and I knew exactly what it felt like to lose a parent.

“He's pulling back now, but the last thing he just told me is that he wants you to take the captain's exam within the next year or two. He says you'll pass it and get your own precinct by the time you're thirty-six. A little before he was able to do it.”

She sucked in a small breath and stared at him wide-eyed. “My dad got his first precinct at thirty-seven,” she said. “He was the youngest in our family to get that far that fast. I come from a long line of cops.”

Heath sat back with a sigh and said, “Sorry for that impromptu reading. Your dad was knocking on my energy from the minute you came in the door.”

“What does that even mean?” she asked him, a look of wonder on her face as she picked up her iced tea and took a steadying sip.

I answered for Heath. “Sometimes when a deceased person sees a chance to communicate with a loved one,
they work really hard to get our attention. We call it knocking, because it sort of feels like that. It's sort of a tap-tap-tap on our energy; not a sound really, just a sort of pressure tapping at the edge of our personal space.”