Ghost of a Chance (13 page)

No one spoke as Adam, Dad, and I uncovered
the body of my husband.

“He’s so still,” I said, half to myself, as
I pulled a book from his chest. In fact, the stillness of the body
gave credence to Adam’s statement: Spider was dead. I averted my
eyes from Spider’s face as Adam uncovered it, bracing myself for
what could well be a grisly sight, but to my surprise, there were
no blood, no marks whatsoever.

Adam leaned down to listen at Spider’s
chest. He looked up and shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. As a rule
I didn’t lie, but it seemed incredibly crass to brush off Spider’s
demise with a curt “I’m not.” So I said nothing, just looked at the
empty shell that had been my husband, and wondered at what point
during the past twelve years Spider had changed from a man I loved
to someone whose passing left me feeling nothing inside.

“Was he crushed to death, do you think?” I
asked, hesitant to check Spider’s arms, legs, and rib cage for
apparent broken bones. “Shouldn’t he have some sort of marks on
him? That bookcase looks heavy.”

“It is, and he should.” Adam evidently
didn’t share my qualms. He gave Spider’s remains a quick
examination. “There are markings on his throat and face.”

I wasn’t the only one who watched with a
morbid curiosity as he went over Spider’s arms and legs before
returning his attention to Spider’s head. “His head isn’t bashed
in, is it?” Pixie asked.

He frowned, glancing over his shoulder to
where she hovered with bright, interested eyes. “Stay back.”

I leaned forward to look at what had caught
his attention. Nothing caught my eye.

“Heart attack, do you think?” my father
asked.

“No. There’s no way this scene could be
created by him simply falling down. We won’t know what killed him
until the autopsy, although the marks on his neck could indicate he
was strangled.” Adam’s eyes were filled with glacial fury. “I do
know this: whoever killed him used
my
basement to do the
job!”

“Whoever…” Unbidden, my gaze slid over to
where Meredith was having his head bandaged by Savannah.

Adam’s jaw tightened as he stood up. “I’m
going to have to call the office.”

“Can I see? Is it gory?” Pixie asked,
standing on tiptoe, as if that would enable her to see Spider. “It
will be traumatic for me if you don’t let me see.”

“It will be more traumatic if I bend you
over my knee and paddle your butt for not doing as I say,” Adam
answered.

Her mouth dropped open. “That’s child
abuse!” “Which office are you calling?” I asked, trying to rid
myself of the image of Spider’s body.

Adam thought for a moment, then shrugged. “I
suppose both. The watch won’t be so bad, but I hate to have to
explain to my mortal boss why a U.S. marshal has a murdered man in
his basement.”

“Then don’t.”

We both turned in surprise to look at my
father. “You can’t be serious, Dad.”

“Sure, I’m serious. No one is going to miss
Spider. Why do you have to report his death? We can just bury him
somewhere isolated, and Karma can report him missing. After a
while, the cops will stop looking for him.”

“Ignore him,” I told Adam. “He was raised by
hyenas. How on earth are you going to explain to the marshal people
about the sealing?”

He ran his hand through his hair. Despite
the bizarre situation, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him.
Spider had been nothing but trouble to him while he was alive, and
now he was even more so dead.

“I don’t know. I’ll have to think on it. We
have more than ten hours before the seal is up. Right now, there
are more important things to take care of.” He pulled a tattered
green blanket out of a small wooden chest and laid it over Spider.
“It’s cooler down here than anywhere else in the house. Unless you
have strong objections, I’d like to leave him where he is.”

I allowed him to pull me to my feet. “No,
that’s fine. I imagine the police won’t be happy if we disturb the
scene any more than it has been.”

“No, they won’t.”

“I think you’re making a mistake,” my father
said. “Leave sleeping dogs lie; that’s my policy. Or in this case,
let dead insects lay.”

“Not funny, and not helping,” I told
him.

He gave me a feeble smile.

“You guys are all mean,” Pixie said, her
lower lip mutinous as I pushed her toward Savannah and Meredith.
Adam moved to a corner and pulled out a cell phone.

“Yes, we are. Deal with it.” I assumed Adam
was calling the captain of the watch. I stopped in front of
Meredith, looking at him with dispassionate eyes. “What exactly
happened down here?”

“I didn’t kill Spider, if that’s what you’re
about to accuse me of doing,” he snapped, pushing his wife away,
the better to glare at me. “That’s not to say I wouldn’t have
earlier, but I didn’t kill him.”

“So you admit you wanted to kill him?” Dad
asked.

“No!” Meredith said quickly, confusion
tingeing his belligerence. “You’re twisting my words! I just meant
that he could be obstinate about some things. Sure, I wanted to
punch him in the face sometimes, but I want to punch a lot of
people, and you don’t see me doing it, do you?”

“You were down here alone with him,” I
pointed out. “He was killed. It seems entirely possible to me that
he struggled with you, and the bookcase was pulled over, knocking
you out cold and finishing the job on Spider.”

“I don’t care what seems possible to you! I
didn’t kill anyone, let alone my partner!”

“You don’t have to yell; we’re right in
front of you,” Dad said.

I shushed him.

“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 godforsaken 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 hell…? 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 damned 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?”

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 Akashic 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 assume 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 basement. “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 basement 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 god’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 hell 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, shivers
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?”