Honey House (11 page)

His smile was mocking. “A new game, Miss Carmichael? I confess I can’t see the purpose, but maybe it’s all the thrill of the hunt for you.”

Stung, I fought the urge to strike back. And lost. “You know, I’m sure I didn’t leave that note from Jason lying open on my bureau. Did you deliberately seduce me so you could search my place without a warrant?” I asked snottily.

Actually, this had bothered me a lot since yesterday. I had left the note on the bureau, but I was certain it had been closed, and addressed to me. Of course, I no longer had access to the note, since the sheriff had confiscated it as evidence. Just before he’d walked through the rest of my apartment looking for proof of my involvement in Jason’s murder. He’d claimed he’d found evidence of a crime while in my home on unrelated business. It was hard to say which of us had been more pissed at the time.

I watched the flush creep up his neck. Seemed I’d just yanked the tiger’s tail.

“Are you accusing me of abusing my office?” he asked, his voice very soft. “Need I remind you Miss Carmichael that it was
you
who seduced me?
You
who thought to distract me from my investigation?”

With a deep breath, I fought to control my temper. After all, he had a point. I
had
kissed him first. Besides, arguing wouldn’t help. Time to change strategies. Growing up with con artists makes a girl light on her feet. I rapidly shuffled through my repertoire of characters. I immediately discarded the helpless female. Quinn would never buy it. He might, however, go for contrite.

“Look, Sheriff— Quinn,” I tried again. “I didn’t mean to pick a fight. It’s been a very long couple of days. I’m sorry. I really am. I just need to know what happened.

“Please…please, can you tell me if you have any news of Jason’s murder?”

Quinn looked at me for a long time, his amazing eyes absolutely unreadable. I forced myself to endure his scrutiny without fidgeting.

When his eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched, I figured he’d decided not to tell me anything. Then with a deep sigh, he started. “Jason returned to Juniper Springs early in the afternoon of the day you saw him. I know this because he stopped in at Cozy’s and had a piece of apple pie and waited for a call. As far as I can tell, he spent the rest of the afternoon in an interview with one or more unknown people at a private location.

“I retrieved his cell phone records and he called half a dozen businesses in the local area, plus a number I can’t trace. It goes to a disposable phone. Assuming he brought them, his computer and cell phone were both missing from his room, but everything else seems to be accounted for. His brother is coming to claim his personal effects and take the body to back to Ohio.

“I’m still waiting to hear from his editor to see if the paper will grant me access to the unpublished articles. There seems to be some question about whether or not they received the full articles or just the proposed outlines, and if it’s just notes and outlines, who actually owns the rights to the content, the family or the paper.

“The medical examiner in Phoenix said that Jason died from exsanguination. In other words, he bled to death after massive wounds of unknown origin to his torso. Do you need more gory details than that Miss Carmichael? Because there are more.”

It was a very long speech for Quinn and surprisingly detailed. I didn’t think I liked the idea that the notes or articles could still be floating around out there somewhere. Still, informative or not, I couldn’t let him get away with talking to me that way. I must have forgotten I was supposed to be contrite.

I hardened my face. “You don’t know me very well if you think a little blood and gore would deter me. Maybe you should look a little deeper into my past. What else did they find, Sheriff?” I asked coldly.

His left eyebrow rose, and he looked at me speculatively. With a nearly imperceptible shrug, he continued, “The forensic unit suspects that more than one weapon was used. He had numerous broken bones and they believe something hard and heavy was used to take him down. The weapon would have been heavier and with more surface than a baseball bat, but the deep tissue injuries are consistent with an impact injury. Not unlike what they see from a hit-and-run, except the area of damage was confined to his upper body. The second weapon cut away the evidence that would help us determine what brought him down.”

“So, did more than one person kill Jason? Or one person with two weapons?” I asked.

“I don’t think I like your interest in this, Miss Carmichael. You aren’t officially cleared as a suspect, although I don’t believe you’re capable of doing quite so much damage by yourself. You aren’t considering something as asinine as trying to investigate this murder yourself, are you?”

The thoughts that had sprung so unexpectedly into my head yesterday turned into words that tumbled from my mouth. “Jason sought shelter at the Honey House and that makes him my responsibility. I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure his killer is caught.”

I stood to leave and Quinn grabbed my wrist. His grip was painfully tight. “If you fuck with this investigation, I will personally haul your ass to jail.”

I leaned into the pain. I leaned in so close our faces were practically touching. I could feel his hot breath against my lips; I remembered the taste of that mouth on mine. Someone’s breath was loud in my ears, but I didn’t know if it was his or mine. We stayed like that a long time, our lips a hairsbreadth apart.

While our tableau remained frozen, something inside of me began to change. It started as a bit of warmth behind my navel, like hot chocolate on a winter day, nothing more. The sensation of warmth began to grow, slowly flowing from my core outward, filling my limbs, heating me from the inside out. A distant buzzing like the sound of high voltage power lines sounded inside my head. My skin prickled, the hair rising from goose flesh, electricity snapping. I was changing, and I wasn’t afraid. I let the power fill me, and when I was full, I let it spill out over Quinn.

“Fuck,” he said, and quickly let go of my wrist.

****

“Susan,” Quinn said with a tip of his hat. Her face lit up at Quinn’s voice, until she looked up from her jewelry counter and saw the two of us standing there. Quinn had decreed I had to come with him to interview the witnesses rather than muck about on my own. I’d demurely agreed, which made him suspicious. It probably should have.

Our first stop was Elegant Rocks, Susan’s upscale jewelry store right in the center of Main Street. Nothing but the best for our Susan, I thought wryly. She looked her usual elegant self, in a sleek black skirt and crisp white blouse. Her hair was in a short, blonde bob, not a strand out of place. She was tastefully decorated in silver and turquoise at her ears, throat, and wrists.

I, on the other hand, looked windswept. Quinn had picked me up on his motorcycle for our round of questioning. Jeans, boots, black leather jacket, and with my mass of black hair pulled back into a long braid, I made the perfect picture of biker babe.
Swell.

In less than five minutes, Susan managed to tell us she and Jason had never spoken face to face, and her contribution would have only been to fill in any blanks in the town background. The warmth that spread through me earlier suddenly flared, and I listened quietly to what she was telling Quinn as she stared up at him and batted her baby blues. She was lying.

“Of course, I don’t know anything about false paranormal activity, unless you count KC’s fortune telling. No offense, I’m sure. I think this is all a big to do about nothing, I’m sure it will all blow over,” she said airily.

“A man died, Susan,” Quinn said, and there was an edge of anger in his voice.

“Oh, Susan didn’t mean anything by that, did you?” I asked sweetly, putting myself between the two of them. Considering I was four inches shorter than Susan and over a foot shorter than Quinn, it wasn’t exactly an impressive gesture, but I still needed something from her. That inner voice was telling me there was more here.

“Susan,” I said, taking her arm and steering her away from Quinn, “Do you have crystals? Chakras?” I asked.

“Of course I do, would you like to see them?” she asked, and for the first time ever, she sounded genuinely enthusiastic about something other than Quinn.

That inner warmth flared again. “Yes, please,” I said, and I made a little gesture with my hand, trying to tell Quinn without words to wait here. Susan led the way to a small back room that was black as velvet from floor to ceiling. This room didn’t have the large glass display counters of the main store. There were small occasional tables topped with black velvet. Some of the tables had crystals displayed, while the others were empty, perhaps waiting for the customer to request which crystals or stones they wished to see.

“This is an amazing room, Susan. I can feel the power,” I said, surprised to hear the sincerity in my own voice.

“Yes,” she answered.

“What did Jason think of this room?” I asked.

“He found it amusing. He called it crackpot central,” she said with a sniff. “Then he asked me a few background questions about Juniper Springs and Sedona, looked around the main store, then left.”

I didn’t bother to point out that she had already told us she hadn’t actually seen Jason. What’s a little lie during a police investigation? Apparently, Susan and I had more in common than I thought.

I walked around the space looking at her displays, the splashes of color that gleamed against their luxurious backdrops. A pale pink stone seemed to glow, drawing me in from across the room. I looked at Susan with my hand hovering. She nodded her permission for me to hold the stone.

The label identified it as rose quartz, and I could see the delicate play of light through the inner cracks and crevices. Heat flared through my hand when I picked it up. I stifled my gasp. It felt the same as the heat that flared through my hands when I was able to read into someone. The quartz was large, about the size of the palm of my hand, and not as polished as the other crystals displayed. It felt perfect to me as my fingers closed over the heat.

I didn’t bother to examine my motives, I just handed Susan the money and slipped the stone in my pocket where it lay warm against my thigh. I asked a few more questions about Jason before the bell at the outer door gave a delicate tinkle, and Susan hurried out to meet her new customer. I followed close behind and noticed Quinn had positioned himself near the doorway to the backroom. Probably so he could hear what we’d been saying.

The customer was only browsing and Susan returned to us as we made our way to the door. “Really, Quinn, I don’t understand why you are dragging this creature along on your investigation,” Susan said, back to her catty self.

Quinn looked down at me for a moment, and I watched his face fill with anger. He’d not been happy when I’d told him he could take me along or I’d do it myself. Now I watched as something mean crawled into his eyes. “Sometimes it’s nice to know where your suspects are,” he said blithely.

Susan laughed.

The two of them smugly dismissing me just plain pissed me off. If I’d taken the time to think about it, I might have let the comments go, just taken the high road. Instead, I took a broad swipe at both of them, and it didn’t take a word. With a bit of an exaggerated move, I tossed my braid over my shoulder exposing the bite marks and the bruising on my neck. The movement of my hand drew Susan’s attention to the marks, as I knew it would.

“Whatever have you been doing, KC? You look as though you’ve been—”

Her eyes flicked to Quinn, probably expecting to share her snide remark with him. What she saw on his face snapped her mouth closed into a tight grimace. There was no missing the slow flush as it crawled up Quinn’s neck and colored his face. She looked back and forth between us, then without another word turned on her heel and went back inside her store.

I snapped on my helmet and climbed on behind Quinn, wrapping my arms around his waist as he accelerated away from the store.

“Bitch,” he muttered.

“Don’t you ever forget it,” I replied, and hid my smile against his back.

****

Four businesses later, we didn’t know much more than Susan’s little morsel.
Oh, wait.
I did know more. I knew that everyone we spoke to was lying. What I didn’t know was why. Oh, yeah, and I didn’t know why Quinn was pretending not to notice they were lying.

The questions the sheriff asked at each location were carefully worded. “Did you speak with Jason Brill about false paranormal activity?” he’d ask. “Of course not,” they’d answer dutifully. He’d end each interview with an invitation to call him personally, if they remembered anything important later. He was effectively shutting me out, even though he made it appear I was included.

Unsurprisingly, we returned to the Honey House without any new information. Gabrielle came out as soon as we pulled up, and I wondered if she’d been watching for us.

“KC, Jason’s brother is here. I gave him an upstairs room on the opposite side from Jason’s. He’s holding it together for now, but he’s strung pretty tight. He wants to see you.”

“Not until he sees me first,” Quinn growled, and stomped past us to go inside.

Gabrielle watched him go, and I noticed her mouth was hanging open slightly. She turned to look at me. “Whatever have you done to Quinn, girl?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“He’s been sheriff here for about a year, I guess, and I’ve never seen him so wound up. He’s always been laid back, pleasant, even. He and Joanne were thick as thieves, you know?”

“Really? Now that surprises me. I thought he didn’t like anything paranormal?”

“Quinn? What gave you that impression?” Gabrielle asked, looking genuinely puzzled.

“Seriously? All he’s done is give me a hard time about fortune telling and running cons. And every question he asked today was about fake paranormal activities. I was under the distinct impression that he doesn’t believe in anything woowoo,” I said.

Gabrielle snorted. “I wouldn’t be too sure about that, if I were you,” she said and started for the door. “You have another visitor in the library, by the way. Edwin Merkham, Jason’s editor.”