Deceptions: A Cainsville Novel (17 page)

T
he next day, Gabriel got a message that Pamela wanted to see me. I’d refused to visit her until she told me what she knew about omens. Now she was ready and, despite the bad timing, I had to go before she changed her mind.

We sat in the visiting room, which was almost a jail cell itself, so small and empty even our lowered voices echoed. Then the door opened, and a guard escorted my birth mother in.

I’d been told I look like her. While I didn’t see it, I could logically break down the component parts. My hair color came from Todd. Hers is dark, laced with gray. She’s only forty-five, but I now realized she looked older than he did, as if prison had taken more of a toll on her. Old pictures showed we shared a body type—tall and slender. She’d put on weight since and her looks had faded. When she saw me, though, her face lit up, and sparked memories of me looking up at her and thinking she was the most beautiful woman in the world, and how I wanted to grow up to look just like her.

Then she saw Gabriel, and that glow evaporated.

“I told you I wanted to see my daughter alone.”

“He knows about the hounds,” I said. “About the Huntsmen, the omens, everything I was asking you about.”

From the look on her face, you’d have thought I’d promised Gabriel my eternal soul. Or slept with him. For Pamela, either would be equally horrifying.

I met her gaze with a hard look. “I told you I needed help. You refused. Gabriel didn’t.”

“Of course he didn’t. He’d do whatever it takes to get into your bank account. You can’t trust him, Olivia.” She stared at Gabriel for two long seconds before saying, “You aren’t even going to dispute that, are you?”

“Whether I’ve earned Olivia’s trust is for her to say. I know I’ve lost it more than once. I’ll freely admit that. As should you.”

“You can’t even feign respect, can you, Gabriel?”

“Respect, like trust, is earned. Also reciprocal.”

She turned to me. “Why do you tolerate him?”

“Because I like him. Also because I respect him. Trust . . . ? Mmm, that’s a tough one. But I’ll bite the bullet and say yes, I trust him. And as fun as it is to dance this waltz again, I’m really going to ask that we talk instead.”

“Not with him here.”

Gabriel murmured to me that he’d wait in the hall, and got up and left us.

“You should ask yourself why he didn’t just do that in the first place,” Pamela said as he left. “He wanted to make an issue of it. If I ask him to leave and you defend him, then he wins.”

“I didn’t come here to fight about Gabriel,” I said. “Let’s talk about hounds.”

“That’s not—”

“Not what you called me here for? It damned well better be.”

I expected her to take offense, but she only smiled and shook her head.

“You look like your father when you put your foot down like that.”

“About the hounds . . .”

“We will discuss that, Olivia. First, though, I heard about James.” She reached out and squeezed my hand, quickly, before the guard noticed. “I heard you were the one who found him. You and Gabriel. The news said something about bizarre circumstances leading you two to James’s body. It hinted you were lured there.”

I didn’t tell her what had been done to James’s body. That wasn’t part of the media coverage. If I told Pamela about the way his corpse had been mutilated, she’d seize on the possibility that whoever killed James was the real Valentine Killer. That wasn’t where I wanted my focus right now. James deserved better.

“It’s no random murder,” I said. “Gabriel and I were summoned there.”

“Are you sure
both
of you were?”

“Um, yes. I got a message, and I saw his.”

“And he absolutely couldn’t have sent yours?”

I stared at her. “Oh, no. Don’t you dare even suggest—”

“If you know what I’m going to suggest, that’s because you already suspect it.”

“No, it’s because I can follow a trail of leading questions.”

“I had a visitor who told me that Gabriel Walsh murdered your fiancé. Beyond any doubt.”

“Then your visitor has an agenda—”

“He also has proof.”

“I don’t give a damn, because you could show me a video of Gabriel murdering James and I still wouldn’t believe it.”

“James came to see me last week.”

“What?”

“He was desperate to figure out what hold Gabriel had over you. He thought, since I’ve worked with the man, I might know. We discussed our mutual concerns. Now, having someone tell me that Gabriel murdered James—”

“He did not. Which I know because I was in his condo that night. All night. And no, not in the same bed. I was there because James had tried to have me kidnapped.”

“Gabriel convinced you that James was a threat and persuaded you to stay in his apartment?”

“Didn’t you hear me? James
was
a threat. Look, I’m not getting into this—”

“You
need
to get into this, Olivia. You need to take a cold hard look at Gabriel’s behavior. He keeps you from your family. He turns you against James. I hear he even took you away from your job so you could work for him. Now you’re staying in his apartment? Don’t you see how he’s controlling you?”

I wanted to laugh, but her expression was dead serious.

I pushed my chair back. “This isn’t about James’s murder. It’s about distracting me from asking questions, while planting seeds of doubt about Gabriel, for whatever ridiculous reason—”

“For whatever
ridiculous
reason?” Pamela gripped the edge of the table. “To protect you, Eden. You may not like being called that, but to me you are Eden Larsen, my daughter, and I will do whatever it takes to protect you. I know you want answers, and you think I’m holding back. I’m
protecting
you. Nothing could make me happier than if you’d lived your life without ever knowing any of this.”

“Maybe, but it has nothing to do with Gabriel.”

“It has
everything
to do with Gabriel. Everything you want to ask me about? He’s part of it. James was a threat, so he murdered him. If your new boyfriend becomes a threat, he’ll do the same to him. If you don’t toe the line and give Cainsville what it wants, Gabriel will turn on you. They’ll
make
him turn on you.”

“If the Cwn Annwn are telling you this—”

“They don’t need to.” She leaned forward, her hands still on the table. “I can’t help you from in here, baby. All I can do is give you the most sincere piece of advice possible. Run. Get someplace they can’t find you.”

I got up and walked out.

—

Gabriel was waiting in the hall. As I came out, he caught my expression and said, “She told you something?”

“Yes. You’re evil.”

His brows shot up. “That’s news?”

I smiled as he fell in step beside me. “Sadly, that was the gist of the entire conversation. She wouldn’t talk about the hounds and the omens, because it was far more important to warn me against you.”

I’d decided I wouldn’t mention the ridiculous murder accusation, because even to put it into words seemed as if I gave it some credence.

I continued. “Pamela’s bloodline might be fae, but she has a connection with the Huntsmen. They seem to be warning her about you, just like they warned me. The question now is the nature of that connection. Edgar Chandler was involved in the murders of Peter Evans and Jan Gunderson
and
he was involved with the Cwn Annwn. Does that mean the rest of the murders could have been connected, too?”

We walked through a set of doors.

“Then there’s the significance of what was done to James,” I said. “We haven’t discussed that.”

“That’s what I was thinking about while I waited. Some aspects of the earlier crimes weren’t released to the general public. The court records are open, which means anyone could duplicate the crimes, but the way he was murdered does open a strategy for freeing Pamela.”

“Even if she hates your guts?”

“If I failed to give my best defense to every client who hated me, I’d have a very poor record indeed.”

T
he rest of Friday was quiet. Ricky and I went to a movie in the city. Big, loud, and action-packed, it was the perfect mental vacation. Afterward, I had to visit the police station with Gabriel for a follow-up on James’s case. The case was now being handled by the CPD. Gabriel explained why, but . . . let’s just say that as soon as I had a moment to relax with a book, I’d be eschewing novels for a few basic legal and law enforcement texts.

Saturday morning, Ricky gave me a lift to my parents’ house so I could find something appropriate to wear to the funeral. Gabriel picked me up at the house. He had his new car now, having retrieved it that morning. About five minutes before we arrived, Ricky texted that he’d found a shaded spot for us to stand, a couple of hundred feet from the grave site.

Grave site.

James’s grave.

James was dead.

Even after three days, the reminder hit with the force to nearly double me over. When my father died, I’d had warning. He’d suffered a series of heart attacks, so I’d had time to say everything I wanted. I had never realized how important that was until now.

I’d loved James. More than that, I’d cared for him. Love was about what
I
felt. Caring was about James—the life I wanted for him, whether I shared it or not.

I had pictured another future for James and me, one where he’d come to accept our separation, and gone on to meet the perfect woman and become senator, and then we’d meet on the street, years later, him with a little girl holding his hand and a boy on his shoulders and I’d tell him how good it was to see him, how happy I was for him, and I
would
be happy. I would look at him, with everything he’d wanted from life, and I’d be so pleased that he had it.

And now there was none of that. His life—his future—gone. Because of me.

Gabriel parked where Ricky had suggested, far enough away that we could walk through the trees, in hopes few would notice us.

“I realize this is inconsiderate of me to mention, but . . . James won’t know you’re here, Olivia,” Gabriel said, studying my face before we got out. “Do you really want to go through with this? You had your goodbye. I firmly believe you did. And you did absolutely nothing to cause his death.”

“Maybe not directly, but—”

“While I realize it is wrong to speak ill of the dead, the fact remains that if he was targeted due to your association, then that happened because he would not dissociate himself from you, despite your insistence that he do so.”

I turned to gaze out the car window. “What if he was compelled to pursue me? Fae compulsion.”

“Is that what you think?”

I shrugged.

His voice softened. “There is a limit to such compulsions. If there was not, neither the Tylwyth Teg nor the Cwn Annwn would need to persuade you to speak to them. The desire and the will must be there or the compulsion doesn’t work. You did nothing wrong. If you still wish to watch the service—”

“I do.”

“We should go, then. I will ask one thing of you, though.”

“What’s that?”

“That you do not feel the need to restrain yourself. This is the funeral of someone you cared about. I don’t expect stoicism.”

I found a smile for him. “Thank you,” I said, and we got out of the car.

—

It was a hot June day, humidity creeping in, as it is wont to do in Chicago. I remembered being at a garden party with James just last summer, both of us choking in the heat, me lamenting my decision to wear makeup, which was dripping onto my white sundress. He’d said that come February, when I was trudging through three feet of snow, cheeks raw from the subzero winds, I’d be dreaming of such weather. He was right. Complaining about the weather is an official pastime in Chicago, but the truth is that I’d never consider giving up those mercurial changes. I love the crazy weather. Just as I love my city, almost as much as James did.

The city is what had brought us together, at another party. Someone had been commenting on the wind that day, howling off the lake like a wild beast, and another guest had joked that’s what you expect from the Windy City. I mentioned that Chicago got that name from its politicians, historically known for their bluster, a situation that hasn’t changed. James had chimed in, and we went off on a riff about the weather and the politicians, entertaining our fellow guests, and it was the first time I’d seen him as someone other than the son of a family friend, someone I’d paid no more mind than the furniture.

When our group had broken up to mingle, he’d steered me into a corner to talk Chicago history, which sounds like an inauspicious start to a relationship, but when James spoke about his city, there was a passion—a spark and a light and a humor—that made me say, “Wow, he’s not what I expected at all.”

Now I stood at his funeral, watching them prepare to lower his casket into the ground, as I sweated in my dress and thought about that party and looked out past the treetops at the city skyline, and I remembered him, all the best of him, because there was so much that had been good. And I cried. I cried and I cried.

Gabriel was careful that day. He stood at my shoulder, but slightly behind me, so even if I turned, I couldn’t see him or—more important—check how he was reacting to my tears. Yet he stayed close enough that I could feel him brushing against my back and hear the whisper of his breath.

Gabriel may not have been able to provide a shoulder to cry on or a warm embrace to fall into, but he did everything he could to make up for that.

The crowd was huge. Hundreds of people, from colleagues to college friends, from those who’d supported his father as senator to those who’d hoped to see James in that seat. We were a hundred yards from the grave site, too far to catch more than snatches of the service. Also too far to catch anyone’s eye, but as it was winding down, someone said, “Oh, excuse me. Didn’t see you there,” and I started to turn, but Gabriel’s hand moved to my shoulder, keeping me still.

“Mr. Walsh,” the man said. “Ms. Jones. Sorry. I didn’t know it was—”

“Yes, you did,” Gabriel said, his voice a deep rumble. “And if that phone rises another inch, I will take it from you. I will not take it gently. Nor will I return it in one piece.”

“I’m not trying to—”

Gabriel moved so fast I stumbled as the bracing wall of him disappeared. I turned to see a young man, maybe thirty. Though he wore a suit, he wasn’t a mourner—his tie was loose, the top button undone, his cheeks unshaven.

Gabriel took his phone. As he’d warned, he did not do it gently, yet the reporter was still caught off guard and jerked back in surprise as the cell vanished from his hand.

“You can’t—”

“I did.”

Gabriel flipped through the pictures. The reporter had been snapping shots from a distance, slowly closing in. Gabriel removed the
SIM
card, again so quickly that the reporter could do no more than yelp in protest.

“Jesus!” The man leapt forward. “You can’t—”

“I did.” Gabriel tucked the
SIM
card into his pocket. Then he forced a factory reset on the phone and handed it back. “Now leave. This is a funeral, and I won’t allow you to cause a scene.”

“Me? You just—”

“I
avoided
a scene, one where you invaded a mourner’s privacy and I was forced to take more serious action to stop you. Now turn around and leave.”

He did, grumbling and cursing Gabriel.

“Thank you,” I said when the reporter was gone.

“I’m simply relieved it didn’t escalate to violence given . . .” He nodded toward the crowd of mourners.

“Witnesses,” I said.

A twist of a smile. “I meant because it’s a funeral.”

“That, too.”

He gave my shoulder a light squeeze before turning me back toward the service, letting me lean against him once more.

As soon as it ended, I said, “We should go before anyone else notices us.”

“Hmm.”

I followed the angle of his shades to see a cameraman and reporter heading our way, another crew following behind.

We moved at Gabriel’s long-legged march until he realized that I had to jog to keep up. He slowed before we called more attention to ourselves. But the moment we’d set out with a half-dozen reporters in tow, it was like the wake behind a powerboat, spreading behind us, alerting every reporter nearby. Some of
them
had no compunctions about running. As they closed in, Gabriel’s hand went to my back and his other lifted, ready to warn off anyone who came too close. No one did. That hand was enough.

I kept my face lowered, slipped on sunglasses plucked from my purse, moving quickly as cameras snapped and reporters called questions from all sides. Gabriel didn’t acknowledge them. We just kept going until . . .

Until we saw the new Jag . . . with police cruisers parked in front of and behind it.

Despite Gabriel’s shades, I swore I saw him aiming blast rays at those cars, his jaw tight enough to snap teeth.

Two officers were heading straight for us.

“Gabriel Walsh?” one said as he drew near.

“Yes,” Gabriel said.

The other stepped into his path. “Gabriel Walsh, you’re under arrest for the murder of James Morgan.”