Ghost of a Chance (26 page)

“I prefer to just…” Dad waved his hands in a
vague manner and continued to drift around the room.

Adam nodded at my father and took a moment
to eye us all before saying, “Someone here is a murderer. Someone
is lying. Someone has deceived us all from the beginning. And I for
one am getting a little tired of having my house used as the
backdrop of this little drama. In exactly one hour and thirty-seven
minutes, the seal will dissolve, at which point the watch will
arrive, and I will have to deliver into their possession one bona
fide murderer. The question is, who will that person be?”

“He’s ever so intimidating, isn’t he?” Tony
whispered to Jules. “Quite gives me the chills!”

Adam’s head snapped around to look at
them.

“So sorry. I’ll stop, shall I?”

Jules whapped his partner on the shoulder as
the former made a locking gesture over his mouth.

“I don’t see that the watch need to be
brought in at all,” my father said as he flitted past us in a
never-ending circuit of the room. “It’s not like anyone is going to
miss Spider. The world is a better place for his leaving.”

I sighed to myself. There were times when
the urge to slap a big piece of duct tape over my father’s mouth
was almost impossible to resist.

“We’re well aware of your opinion, thank
you,” Adam said, giving my father a chastising look that completely
missed its mark. “The fact remains that Spider was killed, here, in
my house, and he had strong business and personal ties to the
Otherworld. The watch will demand that his murderer face justice.
What we must determine in the next hour and a half is who will face
that justice.”

“Justice,” I said softly, my eyes moving
from Meredith to Pixie. Would justice be done that day? “So, what
now?”

“We’re going to do this logically, step by
step. After due consideration of the facts, I’ve come to the
conclusion that there are two solutions to the problem that we have
to think about: one likely, and one very unlikely. We’ll take the
likely solution first, by beginning with a brief examination of the
motive for killing Spider. First of all, there’s his widow.”

“Me?” I asked, somewhat surprised.

Adam nodded. “You told me the payment you
were charging Spider for cleaning the house was a divorce. From
that statement and other comments you’ve made, I believe it’s safe
to say there was no love lost between the two of you.”

“There’s no love lost between several people
and myself, but I don’t go around murdering them,” I answered with
what I hoped looked like a sincere smile.

His expression remained grim. “We’re not
addressing the issue of your relationship with other people.
However, given that Spider was going to agree to a divorce, you
don’t seem to have had a reason to want him dead. Unless he had a
fortune that you will inherit?” Adam’s eyebrows rose
questioningly.

I made a wry face. “Our house is mortgaged
to the hilt so he could use the money on real estate speculations.
I’m sure I won’t even get back the money Spider paid for your
house, so no, there is no hidden fortune, no assets tucked away.
Just a bunch of debt.”

“I’ll talk to you later about the situation
with my house. For now, I think it’s safe to say that you didn’t
have a motive to kill Spider. And since you haven’t exhibited any
homicidal tendencies, I think we can move on.”

“Wait just a minute,” Savannah interrupted.
She sent me an apologetic glance. “I’m sorry, Karma. I like you, I
really do, but what Adam said just isn’t true.”

I blinked at her in surprise. “What isn’t
true?”

“That you’re not homicidal.”

Everyone gawked at her, although I doubted
that anyone was as stupefied by her statement as I was. “What?”

“That wergeld that you were charged with.
You killed someone, didn’t you?”

“How did you find out…” My gaze narrowed on
my father as he whisked into view.

“I didn’t say a word,” he answered, holding
up all three hands in innocence before I could accuse him.

“Neither did I,” Adam said quickly.

“Who told you about the wergeld?” I asked
Savannah.

She fretted, looking at her amulet bag. “Oh,
I wouldn’t be comfortable saying. The sanctity of sources and all
that, you know.”

My hair spun out as I whipped around to
glare at Pixie. She had curled up into a little ball of teenage
polter, one that peered at me with miserably guilt-riddled eyes. “I
didn’t exactly tell her. I just asked how long she thought wergeld
would last…”

“We’re going to have a little talk later
about the responsibility that goes along with keeping someone’s
secret,” I told her sternly before turning back to Savannah. “It’s
true that I did destroy someone when I was very young and not in
control of my abilities. My father and Adam both know the
details.”

“That was an isolated situation,” my father
said, continuing his endless patrol around the room. “Karma
wouldn’t kill anyone unless it was life or death.”

“But how do we know it wasn’t?” Savannah
asked.

I shot her a look.

“I’m just playing devil’s advocate,” she
said with a particularly insincere pat on my hand. “I don’t for a
moment believe you did it, but just to make absolutely certain,
shouldn’t we go over every possible reason before dismissing
them?”

“I won’t be accused of not being thorough,”
Adam said with a nod at her. “If you can think of a reason Karma
wanted her husband dead, I’d be happy to hear it.”

“Well…” She toyed with the gauze scarf
draped around her neck. “I can’t think of any reason. I thought
perhaps someone else might be able to. What about her alibi? Where
was she when Spider was killed?”

Adam frowned. “We saw her go upstairs with
Spider. He came back down and went to the basement with
Meredith.”

I nodded.

“Yes, but what about after that? She could
have gone down the back stairs to the basement,” Savannah said.

“You’re missing your calling as a
prosecuting attorney,” I told her.

“We’d have seen her if she had,” Tony
answered quickly.

Jules nodded vigorously. “Yes, we were
hiding in the kitchen. Adam had told us to go to our room to be
safe, but we wanted to see what was going on, so we stayed in the
kitchen and peeped out every now and again. No one came down the
back stairs. We’d have seen them if they had.”

“Besides, I saw her upstairs later,” Pixie
said, scooting forward on the window seat. “After she’d ralphed all
over the floor. I saw her coming out of the bathroom when she was
cleaning up.”

“And that, I believe, is an alibi,” Adam
said dryly.

Savannah leaned back, an odd expression on
her face. “I just think it’s smart to be sure.”

“Agreed. Why don’t we go over your possible
motives and alibi next?” I resisted the urge to smile a catlike
smile.

“Me? I have no motive whatsoever, and my
alibi is that I was with Matthew and Morbid… oh, whatever her name
is.”

“It’s… er…” Pixie stopped, looking
nonplussed. “I’ll get back to you on that.”

“I hardly knew Spider. I had no conceivable
reason to want him dead, but even if I had, I couldn’t have killed
him. I was with people the whole time.”

“Not the whole time,” my father said,
pausing for a moment to strike a dramatic pose. “Dischordia went
upstairs for a few minutes, which is when she saw Karma. And I had
to use the downstairs john. Adam was off smooching up his
girlfriend, which means, my dear, you were alone for a short
time.”

“Oh!” Savannah gasped, outraged. “How cruel
of you to imply that I used the one or two minutes I was alone to
creep downstairs and kill someone! Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t!
Unlike your daughter, I am not a violent person.”

“Hey, now,” I protested. “That is thirty-odd
years in the past.”

“Just playing devil’s advocate,” my father
told Savannah before resuming his parade around the room.

I smiled and forgave the lesser of his
sins.

“Well, in this case, it’s not necessary. I
did not have the time, know-how, or desire to kill Spider.”

My eyes narrowed at her. I could feel the
sudden interest in the air as both my father and Adam picked up on
the lie Savannah had just told. “What was that? You said you didn’t
have the time to murder him?”

“Of course not. I was only alone for a few
minutes.” The look she shot me was scathing, but I didn’t get a
sense that she was lying.

“Then you meant you didn’t have a motive to
murder him?” my father asked, stopping in front of her.

“I just said that, didn’t I?”

I glanced at Adam. He nodded slightly. For
some reason, Savannah was lying about not having the ability to
kill Spider. Why on earth would she hide that fact when it was the
least damning?

“But you could have killed him, if you’d
really wanted to,” Adam said slowly, taking a step toward her.

Her eyes widened slightly, as if she scented
danger. “No, of course not!”

Lie.

“We don’t even know what killed him!”

“True, but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t
have killed him, either by poison or some other method that
wouldn’t leave obvious marks on the body,” I said, leaning forward
toward her. The faint buzzing noise that ebbed and flowed rose
briefly.

One hand fidgeted with the amulet bag; the
other crumpled her skirt. “I didn’t kill him. I’ve told you that
over and over again. And since you have no proof to the contrary, I
will thank you to just move the hell on!”

I narrowed my gaze on the amulet bag, which
hung from a silken cord. “What sort of an amulet do you carry?”

“What on earth does that have to do with
anything?”

“I like amulets. What one do you use?”

She shot an indignant look at Adam. “This
really is going well over the line of what’s reasonable, and into
persecution. I am not guilty of the murder, and no matter how
much—”

“Would you answer Karma’s question, please?”
Adam interrupted.

“I… You people… Goddess! Very well, since
you’re all clearly bent on finding me guilty of something…” She
opened the bag and took out a pretty purple heart-shaped stone.
“It’s an amethyst. A very old one, charged by a local Wiccan. Are
you happy now?”

Her tone still spoke of a lie.

“It’s very pretty. May I?” I held out my
hand.

“If you think I won’t remember this
treatment when this whole thing is over, you’re quite wrong,” she
answered, sharing a glare with Adam, my father, and me as she
dropped the amethyst onto my outstretched palm.

The second the stone hit my hand, I felt as
if I were holding on to a live wire. It was so strong a sensation,
it knocked me backward off the couch. I yelped, getting to my knees
to examine my hand before turning my attention to Savannah. “Good
god, what was that?”

“Honey, are you all right?” Adam squatted
next to the fallen stone, reaching out as if to pick it up.

“No!” I yelled at the same time that Tony
and Jules demanded that Adam leave it be.

“You don’t know where it’s been,” Jules
added.

“That is the most insulting thing I’ve ever
heard!” Savannah declared.

“You haven’t been here long yet,” Tony told
her.

“What is it?” Adam asked me, ignoring the
byplay behind him.

I shook my head and allowed my father and
Pixie to help me to my feet. My arm still tingled from the
sensation of the stone. “I don’t know, but whatever it is, it’s
very powerful.”

We all turned to look at Savannah.

“What is the amulet you carry?” Adam
asked.

“I told you! It’s an amethyst, charged by a
Wiccan.”

“Charged with what?”

“Hope. Strength. Clarity of mind. Nothing
negative, I assure you.”

I pursed my lips, eyeing her, and rubbed my
palm. She wasn’t lying, but the stone contained a massive amount of
something
.

“Karma?”

I couldn’t answer Adam’s unasked question. I
shook my head. “I don’t know. It didn’t seem evil. It was just
very, very strong…” An idea occurred to me, something I felt like
whacking myself on the head about. “What else do you have in the
amulet bag?”

“Oh, this is too much!” she snapped, leaping
off the couch and backing away, her hands held out before her. “I
have been as tolerant as I know how due to the circumstances. I
have answered your endless and very personal questions. I have
tried time and time again to contact Spider in order to find the
killer. I have given and given and given, and not said a single
word about the abuse that’s been heaped upon my head.”

“She’s good,” Tony said sotto voce to Jules.
“I particularly like the little throb in her voice.”

“Must have taken her weeks to get it just
right.”

“Oh!” she shrieked, grabbing a small ceramic
statue of a dog and throwing it at the ghosts. Since they were in
ephemeral mode, it went straight through them and bounced off the
chair cushion to land harmlessly on the carpet. “You horribly rude
spirits! If I was Karma, I’d banish you so quickly your ectoplasm
would spin!”

She’d been backing up as she’d spoken. Adam
and Dad and I looked at one another.

“Grab her?” Dad asked.

“Grab her,” Adam answered, and before
Savannah could do more than turn around to race out of the room,
the two men had her, Adam reaching for the amulet bag hanging
around her neck.

“No!” she screamed at the same time that he
touched it. His yell joined hers as he was knocked backward, the
amulet bag flying out of his hand onto the floor a few feet away.
The blow knocked a small white object out of the bag, but that
wasn’t what caught the attention of everyone in the room.

“What the… what is she?” Pixie asked,
rubbing her arms as she backed away.

The air tingled with power.

“She’s a Guardian,” I answered. “One of the
most powerful people in the Otherworld, someone who thinks nothing
of dealing with demons and demon lords.”