By Familiar Means (12 page)

“The FBI kept files on everybody in the sixties. My
grandmother
has an FBI file.” I bit my tongue. Lieutenant Blanchard made a note.

“And when this newest Nosey Parker just happens to be there when they just happen to stumble across a dead body and a wad of cash—”

Wait. Stop.
What?

“Cash?”

“Oh, yeah.” Blanchard looked up from under his eyebrows. Eyebrow, actually. He only had the one, and it stretched straight across the flattened bridge of his nose. Somebody at some point had landed a serious punch in the center of Blanchard's square face. “The late Mr. Upton had five thousand dollars on him when he was killed. Didn't you know?” Blanchard asked with exaggerated innocence.

“No.” How did a guy who worked in a kitchen get that kind of money? Unless they were celebrity chefs with endorsement deals or TV shows, most cooks didn't actually make that much. Back in the day, Martine and I had pinched pennies and clipped coupons together.

It also hit me that Blanchard didn't say “when he died.” He said “when he was killed.”

Whatever discomfort Blanchard was reading in my expression, he was enjoying it. His shark's grin spread from ear to ear. “Now, Miss Britton, I'm guessing you also did not know that before they became respectable businesspersons, Jake and Miranda Luce were busted for selling pot?”

“No.”

He nodded. “No, of course you didn't. But I did.” He pressed the tip of his index finger down in the file. “So, you gotta see this from my perspective. Here I got a couple of ex-cons, who have recently purchased a building that just happens to have a hidden tunnel, where there just happens to be a dead guy with a wad of cash. Now, just what am I supposed to make out of that?”

It took a minute, but all of this reassembled itself in my bewildered mind. “You think Jimmy Upton was killed in a drug deal?”

You think Jake and Miranda are dealing drugs.
My hands went ice-cold and the back of my neck prickled with goose bumps.

Blanchard's mocking grin vanished, and somehow that made everything worse. “I could not say, at this time. But you see how it is? I've got to ask myself, Is coffee the only business opportunity these two upstanding citizens are taking advantage of? Now.” Blanchard leaned forward a little further. “
Miss
Britton, do you want to tell me just what you were doing down there with the two of them?”

I might not have brought my lawyer with me, but I had given him a quick call before I came in. Enoch and Frank were in close agreement on two important points of interrogation-room etiquette:

1) Only answer the questions asked.

2) Confirm one vital fact.

“Am I under arrest?” I asked.

“Not yet,” Lieutenant Blanchard admitted. Which was only a little reassuring, especially since the words “that
could change” were so clearly shining behind his little round eyes. “But you have hitched yourself to the Luce gravy train, or so you said?”

“I'm painting some murals!” And I couldn't even be sure that was still happening.

“Because you need the money, don't you? Being an artsy type is not exactly a secure or stable lifestyle choice.” I wouldn't have thought it possible for the man's voice to become any more oily. “So, Miss Britton.” Blanchard leaned back in his chair, which creaked ominously, and he folded those bulging arms. “How about you walk me through it? When did you meet the Luces and what happened afterward? Take your time,” he added generously. “Any detail could be significant.”

What happened next was not my best moment ever. I stammered and I stumbled. I tried my best to gloss over the holes where the ghosts and magic and Vibes figured in events, but they were there all the same, and Lieutenant Blanchard was busy noting down every one of them. His favorite phrase suddenly seemed to be, “So, let's go over that again.”

He was also suddenly very, very patient. I could feel the time crawling past on the back of my neck, and I was clutching my purse like a life preserver. There was no clock in the room, and I couldn't check my phone, but I felt sure I had been in here at least two hours.

“Let's go over that again . . .”

“Let's go over that again . . .”

When somebody knocked on the door, I almost let out a cry of relief. Or maybe a whimper.

Blanchard tossed his pencil down and got up to open the door. He was shorter than I thought he was going to be. This time I did see him work the lock.

“Lieutenant Blanchard?” Kenisha was standing on the other side of the threshold. “Telephone for you. It's the medical examiner.”

The lieutenant smiled. “Well, that's all right. I think we're
done here. We've got all your contact information, don't we, Miss Britton? It's highly likely we'll be wanting to talk with you some more.”

“I'll be sure not to leave town,” I muttered as I got to my feet.

Blanchard nodded like he thought this was a very good idea. “Officer Freeman, you can escort Miss Britton out?”

“Yes, sir.”

Kenisha stood back and let me walk out of the room in front of her, but as soon as we were in the hall, she came right up to my side, like she was shielding me from something nasty that might be approaching from the back. Maybe she was.

“I owe you an apology, Kenisha,” I whispered.

“What for?”

“I didn't believe you when you told me how bad he—”

She held up her hand. “Don't. Not 'til we're outside.”

Outside had never felt so good. It was a warm autumn day, with plenty of sunshine and the scent of leaves and the fresh breeze off the river. I inhaled and rubbed my arms. The goose bumps had nothing to do with the temperature of the air.

“Where's Frank?” I asked.

“Emergency at the office,” Kenisha answered. “I promised him I'd make sure you were okay. You are okay, right?”

“Yeah, I think so, mostly. Jeez, that . . .” I gestured toward the station doors. “Was it just me, or has Lieutenant Blanchard got it in for Jake and Miranda?”

Kenisha glanced around to make sure nobody was in earshot. “He's got it in for all kinds of people. Lieutenant Blanchard has very . . . specific ideas about what kind of a town Portsmouth ought to be.”

There was a whole world of meaning waiting under those words, but I could also tell this was not something she could go into right now.

“Listen, Anna,” breathed Kenisha. “I should not be telling you this, but the ME is a friend and he told me—”

“Jimmy Upton was murdered, wasn't he?”

“Yeah. We were pretty sure about that from the beginning.” So was I; I just hadn't wanted to admit it. “The real question was how.”

“Do they know?”

Kenisha nodded. “The medical examiner says he drowned.”

“Drowned?” I thought about the Piscataqua River, so conveniently located right outside the door of Northeast Java. And the Harbor's Rest hotel, with its marina, and the little cut-in for the tugboats down Ceres Street, and . . .

But Kenisha was shaking her head again. “I know what you're thinking, but Upton wasn't drowned in the river. When they analyzed the water in his lungs, they found traces of fluoride and commercial cleaner.”

“Oh,” I said.

“And they found a lot of postmortem bruising, but there were some other bruises from when he was still alive, and those were on his face and skull and neck and across his chest.”

“Oh. Does that mean—”

Kenisha was already nodding. “It means Jimmy Upton was in a fight, and then somebody held him facedown in a sink until he died.”

13

As soon as Kenisha headed back into the station, I pulled out my phone. I'd shut it off for the interview, and as a result, I'd missed the fifteen calls from Grandma B.B.

The city bus stop in front of the police station had a bench. I sat down and hit Grandma's number. She picked up before the first ring finished.

“Anna! Are you all right, dear? Do I need to come bail you out? What's that lawyer's name?”

“I'm fine, Grandma, I'm fine!”

“Why didn't you call? I've been frantic! If it wasn't for Alistair, I think I would have lost my mind!”

I heard a faint meow in the background, and I suddenly pictured Alistair sprawled on the couch, doing something reassuring like grooming or begging for extra nibbles. My familiar would know instinctively that I wasn't in real danger. I felt a surge of gratitude that he was there to help look after Grandma.

“I'm sorry, Grandma,” I told her. “But I couldn't exactly be taking calls in the middle of questioning.”

“Questioning! What kind of questioning?”

“It wasn't that big a deal.” Except if it wasn't that big a deal, why were my knees still shaky? Suddenly, I was very glad we were having this conversation over the phone. I was pretty sure I didn't want Grandma to see the way I was huddling in on myself. “The police just wanted some more details about how we found the body; that's all.”

“Oh.” Grandma sounded a little disappointed—and a little suspicious. “If that's
all
.”

“That's it, Grandma, really.” Almost. Mostly. “They have to be thorough.”

“Merow!” announced Alistair in the distance.

“You're not telling us something, Annabelle Amelia,” said Grandma. “We can hear it.”

“It's
nothing
,” I told them both. “I promise.”

“It is not nothing, and if you hang up this phone, I will call you back, a lot, and I'll make sure all your new friends know you left your
grandmother
worrying at home while you went
sleuthing
all over town.”

She'd do it, too. Grandma B.B. had never been above playing the sympathy card.

“I'm not sleuthing,” I told her. “And I don't think that's a real word anyway.”

“Annabelle.”

“All right, all right, Grandma. I just . . .” I sighed and glanced around. The sidewalk was deserted. A police cruiser was pulling into the parking lot, and another was pulling out. “I swear, I'm not in trouble, but I think Jake and Miranda might be. Lieutenant Blanchard doesn't like them very much.”

“He thinks that they had something to do with that poor man being in the tunnel?”

“Yeah. The problem is my friend Kenisha—you remember her—”

“That nice officer who's in the coven? Yes, of course.”

“Well, she said that”—I swallowed—“that we were right. Jimmy Upton was murdered. Somebody drowned him, probably in a sink someplace.”

“Well, surely that means the Luces couldn't have done it. There's no sink in their new building.”

“Except there is. There's a utility tub in their basement. I saw it when we went down there.”

“Oh. Dear.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Listen, Grandma, I want to go check in on Jake and Miranda and make sure they're okay.”

“Yes, yes, of course. I think that's a very good idea.”

“Are you going to be okay, Grandma?”

“Perfectly, dear. Now that I know you're all right, I'll find plenty to keep me busy.”

*   *   *

I got off the bus in Market Square and trotted down the steps to Ceres Street and Northeast Java. There, I was confronted by the inconceivable. A hand-lettered sign in the window read:
CLOSED
.

My coffee-loving soul cried out in very selfish alarm. I was about to turn around, wondering who I knew who might have Jake and Miranda's home phone number or address, when the door opened behind me. Jake, looking tired and more disheveled than usual, leaned out and beckoned me inside.

He locked the door immediately.

“Hi, Jake. I wanted to come by and see how you were doing.” But I could already see for myself that the answer was going to be some version of “not great.”

“It's the first weekday we've closed in . . . maybe seven years?” he told me. “Last time was Miranda's dad's funeral. But we just got rid of the last of the cameras and stuff and . . . well, I admit it, Miranda's taking this whole thing pretty hard.”

“You don't look so good yourself.” There were dark circles under his eyes, and his cheeks were stubbled above his beard. He slumped, too, like he'd aged ten extra years overnight.

“Yeah, well, it's all kind of heavy, you know?” Jake gestured me toward one of the battered tables. I couldn't
remember ever having been in the shop when it was empty. The smell of coffee lingered, but the unnatural hush raised a distinct restlessness deep underneath my skin. “Here I am worrying about ghosts when it might have been somebody who really needed help and I just didn't—”

Miranda appeared out of the shop's tiny kitchen. “You couldn't have known, old man,” she said, coming over to plant a kiss on Jake's cheek. “Neither of us could.”

“Well, for what it's worth, whatever you've been hearing, it couldn't have been him,” I said. “Kenisha told me he was dead before his body was put in the tunnel.”

I know I did not imagine the relief on Miranda's face. I couldn't blame her. Who wanted to think they'd been hearing a call for help and hadn't recognized it? But there was something else as well. I could see it in the way Miranda was watching Jake. Jake wasn't looking back at her, though. He was staring out the windows into the street and across the river.

“How did he die, Anna?” asked Jake quietly.

“He was drowned in a sink.”

Miranda went ghost white. “Oh, no.”

“And if Blanchard hasn't noticed that old tub down in the basement, he's going to hear about it really soon.” Jake laid a hand on her shoulder. “Man.”

Miranda reached up and covered his hand. “You don't believe we had anything to do with this, do you, Anna?”

“Of course not!” Jake and Miranda were eccentric, sure, but they were not capable of such a thing. Even if I hadn't believed that, I'd been in the basement with my defenses down and my inner eyes wide open. If there'd been a death in there recently, especially if it was murder, I would have picked up something.

Wherever Jimmy Upton was killed, it was not in the old drugstore's basement.

I took a deep breath. “Listen, you guys should probably know I just got out from talking to Lieutenant Blanchard.”

“Oh, Anna, I'm so sorry you had to get mixed up in this,” said Miranda. “If we'd known—”

“It is
not
your fault,” I told her and Jake. “I guess he'd already talked to you?”

“Oh, yeah, the big fuzz wanted to rap a whole lot.” Jake folded his arms. “Until, like, midnight.”

“Jake,” said Miranda.

Jake took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Sorry. Being in that station makes me forget what decade it is. Yeah, we got brought in. And, yeah, Blanchard was all over how we got caught with, like, three marijuana plants and a grow light in the attic forty years ago. And, yeah, maybe we lit up a few and talked revolution with some friends. We did the community service and we haven't sold a joint since, and I haven't been talkin' 'bout a revolution since the Carter administration.”

“We don't even know who we found down there,” added Miranda.

“Blanchard didn't tell you?”

Jake shrugged. “Not so's you'd notice. It was all ‘the victim' this and ‘the victim' that. He wanted to see if we'd spill the beans ourselves, I guess.”

“Do you know who he was, Anna?” Miranda asked.

“His name was Jimmy Upton.”

“Upton?”
repeated Jake. I had the feeling that if he hadn't been sitting down, he would have staggered.

“Did you know him?” I asked.

“Um, no. Not really,” said Miranda. “We met a couple of times after he came to town. It was his sister we knew.”

“His sister?”

Miranda nodded. “She worked for us, it must have been three months ago?”

“Four,” said Jake.

“Right, four. It was only for a couple of weeks, and then she split. No forwarding address.” Miranda frowned. “You remembered to tell Blanchard about that, didn't you, Jake?”

“Yeah. He was real interested, too.”

We all let all this settle in, and none of us liked it.

“Wow. Man. Jimmy Upton.” Jake took off his bandana
and rubbed it across his face. “Poor guy. Are you sure he couldn't be our ghost?”

“Honestly, I don't know,” I told him. “I don't even know if there is a ghost.”

“Could you find out?”

I admit that I'd been hoping Jake would bring this up. On the way over from the station, an idea had occurred to me. I might not believe in ghosts, but I definitely believed in my Vibe. Now that we knew more about what had happened, and what kind of trouble we were looking at, I stood a better chance of being able to understand what that Vibe was trying to tell me. There was only one problem. I couldn't do this alone. I'd promised.

“I think for this one, you should call in an expert,” I told them.

“I'm not bringing in any bunch of ghost hunters,” said Miranda immediately. “We've already had enough cameras blocking our door. We don't need some reality TV freak show messing up the scene.”

“No, no, nothing like that.” I didn't think so, anyway. “I just think you need somebody with more experience than I've got, like Julia Parris.”

“Julia?” said Miranda.

“You know her, right?”

“Everybody knows Julia,” put in Jake. “And I mean, I knew she was into alternate religions, but I didn't know she was all that serious.”

“I did,” said Miranda. “She's got an aura you could see from the International Space Station.”

“And a stick you can't,” Jake muttered.

“Jake!” Miranda swatted him between the shoulder blades.

“Sorry. Sorry, Anna.”

“It's okay,” I told them. I thought about mentioning the rumors that Julia had a nightclub in her past but decided against it.

“Do you think Julia would help us?” he asked.

“Yes, I do.” I might still be a little miffed at Julia for her attitude toward Grandma and for forbidding me from working magic on my own while only an apprentice, but I knew she took her role as a guardian very seriously. She would not turn down a request for help. Impulsively, I seized Miranda's hand. “Ghost or no ghost, we are going to find out who did this. I promise you.” I had no idea how, but I was not going to leave these two to the mercy of Lieutenant Blanchard and his nasty grin and well-filled manila folders.

Miranda didn't say anything. She just pulled her hand out of mine and walked back behind the counter and stared up at the chalkboard menu and the battered sign,
BETTER KARMA THRO
UGH BETTER COFFEE
. I wondered if she'd painted it herself. I pictured the two of them hanging it up above the menu—laughing and optimistic.