Motion for Malice (10 page)

Curt drummed his fingers on the table, clearly trying to measure his words. "So now you want to investigate because you're afraid you're going to be charged with killing this fraud."

I didn't answer.

"Despite the fact you're not a PI," he said. "And you almost got killed last time you tried this."

I looked away.

"And all you have to go on is an SUV."

And Tippi McWirth. And Artemis Angle who, come to think of it, had been the least mournful person at Dorcas's funeral. Well, along with Checkered Pants. But it wasn't hard to imagine Artemis Angle bashing Dorcas in the head. Even though I didn't know him, I had a visceral reaction whenever I laid eyes on him. Much like the reaction I had to dusting.

And then there was the Society of Seers, where, according to Charlotte, Dorcas had some affiliation while she hatched her plan to open psychic kiosks. I wished I'd gotten Charlotte's last name. She seemed to have all the dirt shoveled into one neat little bucket already. I considered under what pretense I could ask Weaver Beeber for her last name

"Did it ever occur to you," Curt said, "to wait and see what happens? You had no reason to kill this—"
"Her name is Dorcas," I cut in. "Was."

"This woman," he finished. "Any fool can see that. Almost any fool."

I cut my eyes back to him. "Are you calling me a fool?"

"No, I'm not calling you a fool. God." He pushed his plate and utensils aside and dropped his head into his hands. "Why can't you just be a normal woman instead of a death magnet?"

Maizy appeared at my right side. "Can I come back now? I couldn't find the waitress. The lady behind the counter said she's making salads in the kitchen." She blew out a sigh and her bangs fluttered gently. "I said I didn't think it was fair that the women had to make the salads, but she said they have a male chef who does everything else, so I guess it's okay." She stopped talking and looked at us. "What's wrong?"

Curt shook his head. "Nothing, Maiz."

Maizy slipped into the booth next to me and nudged me gently. "Is it really nothing, or is it something?"

I met Curt's eyes. They were flat and dark, a little dangerous looking. If I hadn't been so ticked off at him, I might have been turned on. "It's really nothing," I told her.

"Why don't we order?" Curt said. "After all, it might be Jamie's last meal on the outside," he muttered.

"What does that mean?" Maizy turned alarmed eyes to me. "Does that mean jail?" She grabbed my arm. "Are you going to jail? You didn't do anything!"

I shook my head. "Of course I'm not going to jail."

"There'll have to be a trial first," Curt said.

I glared at him. He could sit there and insult me out of anger, but I wasn't going to have him scaring his niece half to death. Her face had gone white and her grip on my arm had tightened. I turned to her. "There's absolutely no way I'm going to jail for anything," I told her. "I'm a model citizen." I smiled my best model citizen smile, but she wasn't having it. It was hard to fool Maizy. I couldn't even fool myself.

"You're fighting about that psychic lady, aren't you?" she said.

"We're not fighting," Curt told her, at the same time I said, "It's just a little argument."

She rolled her eyes. "Come on, Uncle Curt. You know there's no way Jamie did it. I was with her the whole time."

"You stay out of it," Curt told her.

She shot him a furious look. "You should get
into
it instead of running off to New York to play with your guns. Jamie's your woman! What kind of wuss are you?"

"I'm not his woman," I said.

"Wuss?" His eyes narrowed to slits. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You're not a wuss," I said.

"Wuss," she repeated. "Pansy. Chicken. Spineless. Wuss."

"Oh, I get it," he said. "I'm supposed to be
happy
that she falls over dead bodies all day long, is that it?"

"Well, I don't fall over them
all
day," I said.

Maizy was unfazed. "What do you want her to do, spend her days at the mall contributing to the rampant crass consumerism of cheap imported goods that's completely skewing our balance of trade?"

"Yes," Curt said with martini dryness, "that's what I want her to do."

Maizy dismissed him with a flap of her hand. "You don't want a woman. You want Shopaholic Barbie."

"I don't like to shop," I said.

"I suppose you were born with blue hair," Curt said, but he was starting to look a little uncomfortable. "And the piercings, were they factory installed?"

"I'm a kid," she said without hesitation. "It's my job to succumb to peer pressure and ill-advised experimentation."

He frowned. "Experimentation with what?"

She did another hand flap. "Another day. The point is, Jamie is a fully formed individual, and you need to accept her as such."

I looked down at myself and thought
Not so much
on the fully formed part
.

The waitress showed up, took one look at Curt's expression and said, "Why don't I give you a little more time," before hurrying away again.

"Thanks, Dear Abby," Curt said. "But I don't
need
to accept anything."

"No," I said, "you sure don't."

Maizy shrugged. "Then you'll die alone and unloved. And then I'll say I told you so."

"Well, I won't hear it since I'll be dead," Curt said.

"Maybe in an awful hunting accident," Maizy said. "When some buck decides to shoot back."

"He's mad because he cares about you," Maizy said later, after we'd gotten back from the diner, and Curt had stormed into the house, still angry from not fighting about Dorcas Beeber. He hadn't even said goodnight. Not that I'd wanted to hear it. Curt had made it perfectly clear that he just didn't get it. And, if I was being honest with myself, that stung a little. I thought Curt got everything. Now it was too late. He and his dimples would be gone in the morning, and I was on my own.

"I don't know about that." I threw my doggy-bag dinner into the fridge. Turned out I'd lost my appetite after being called a death magnet, which was beyond unfair and kind of mean.

"Men just aren't very good at expressing their emotions," Maizy said. "Not like us women. It's some repressive gene or something. It's why they think it's not manly to cry. Have you ever seen a man cry?"

I thought about Wally, and Weaver Beeber, and my dad when the Eagles lost the Super Bowl. "Plenty of times," I said.

Maizy frowned. "Well, maybe I've got to do some more research on that. Anyway." She dug around in her backpack and pulled out a key. "Ready to go?"

I shook my head. "I don't know, Maizy. I'm not really feeling up to surveillance."

She stuck her hands on her hips. "What
are
you feeling up to, sitting here and moping because Uncle Curt's a doofus?"

"I'm not moping," I said.

"Oh. Yeah." She snorted. "Not much."

"You don't understand," I told her.

"Why, because I'm only seventeen? It's not so complicated. Uncle Curt's afraid of losing you, except instead of coming out and actually saying that, he lashes out in anger." She took a breath. "The anger comes from fear. He's not mad
at
you—he's afraid
for
you. I saw it on Dr. Phil." She grinned. "Dr. Phil's pretty cool for an old guy."

"Great," I said. "So it's fear. What do I do about it?"

She shrugged. "I dunno. I had to shut off the TV and do my trigonometry homework." She waggled the key at me. "So are you ready now?"

I wasn't, not really, but Maizy had a way of lifting my spirits, and I didn't want to be alone with my moping. I reached for the key. "So is that what I think it is?"

She pulled it back. "You said I could drive."

"I said you could drive a Gremlin," I said. "Do not tell me you've got a Gremlin outside."

"Of course not." She slipped the key into her jeans. "It's down in the Walgreens parking lot. I couldn't very well drive it here. I don't have my license."

"You actually got a
Gremlin?"
I asked. "How could you even rent a car when you're not eighteen?"

She shrugged. "No paperwork, no ID, remember? I'm Faith Smith from Des Moines, Iowa, running away from my low-down, abusive drunk of a husband, may he die in a horrible combine accident." She zipped up her jacket. "By the way, you had change coming back, but it was only five bucks, and I figured you wouldn't want to deprive me of a good, nutritious school lunch. So thanks for the turkey wrap. Oh, and I figured it's best to let Honest Aaron get rid of the car when we're done. Returning to the scene of the crime and all that."

Impulsively, I pulled her into a quick hug. "Have I ever told you how much I admire you?"

"Yeah, people tell me that all the time. Oh, wait, here." She pulled a pair of latex gloves from her coat pocket. "You might want to put these on. No point leaving any more fingerprints, even if Honest Aaron is going to KO the car."

I stared at her.

"What?" she said. "I just have your best interests at heart. Look, I've got a pair, too. I call them my driving gloves." She opened the door. "This'll be fun, you'll see."

*   *   *

"This is so not fun," she said an hour later. "I'm bored."

It turned out she had actually rented a Gremlin, and from the looks of it, Honest Aaron had found it in a time capsule at the county salvage yard. It was orange, with a white stripe running down each dinged and rusted side. It was the farthest thing from subtle I could imagine, and it would never blend in to any background. On the plus side, there'd be no problem sending it to the glue factory at the end of the night.

The Oak Grove downtown district on the other side of the dirt-smeared windshield looked pretty much as I remembered it. Lots of silence and shadows. The same primered Toyota Corolla sitting in the same spot. No SUV. No foot traffic. We'd parked half a block down from Destinies with Dorcas on the opposite side of the street. We probably could have parked directly in front of the building. There was no one around to see us anyway. A cold rain had begun to fall, bouncing off the roof with harsh pings.

"It smells in here," Maizy said. She cranked the window down a little.

"It smells like old cigarettes," I told her. "That's why the windshield's so filthy."

"And something's poking me in the butt." She shifted, and her elbow banged the horn. It bleated once and was quiet. Nothing moved outside the car.

"The seats are all ripped up," I said. "The stuffing is just about gone. This car is almost as old as your parents, Maiz."

"I know, that's what I like about it. It's an antique." She pushed aside a streamer hanging from the tattered roof liner and reached for the radio. "At least we can listen to some music." She froze mid-reach. "Where's the radio?"

"Honest Aaron probably sold it," I muttered.

She slumped down even further in her seat, her arms crossed. "I'm bored."

"Me, too," I said. "Maybe we should call it quits. It was a good idea, but—"

A pair of headlights swung around the corner up ahead, and a car rolled to a stop in front of Dorcas's building. The lights went dark, and the driver's door opened. Someone stepped out into the street, but we were too far away, and it was too dark to tell who it was.

Maizy sat up straight. "Jamie, look."

I was looking. "It's not an SUV."

"So what?" Her voice grew excited. "Whoever it is obviously switched out the SUV for something less noticeable to come back to the scene of the crime. You know, like us, with your Escort."

Except we'd gone
more
noticeable than my Escort. We'd practically gone fluorescent. "Can you tell who that is?" I asked.

Maizy squinted into the rain-smeared darkness. "I can't see a thing." She reached for the door handle.

"Wait!" I grabbed her arm. "Where do you think you're going? We agreed no getting out of the car!"

"I have to go to the bathroom," she said. Seconds later she was gone, hurrying down the block toward the figure rounding the hood of the car.

"Damn it, Maizy!" I jumped out and followed her, trying to pull her back before she did something stupid. More stupid than the two of us trying to conduct surveillance, that is. But she was determined and fast. Before I could stop her, she was twenty feet from the front of Destinies with Dorcas. "Hey, can I talk to you for a second?" I heard her call out.

The shadowy figure jumped and spun to face us, and I caught my breath. It was Weaver Beeber. Sort of. The Weaver Beeber I was used to was on the shy side, and pleasant. The man in front of me had anger clearly stamped on his face and a rigid, almost defensive, posture.

"Mr. Beeber!" I hurried up to him. "What on earth are you doing here?"

His features smoothed out into placid Weaver so quickly that I wondered if the angry expression had been simply a play of shadows across his face. "Oh, hello. Janice, isn't it?" He reached for a handshake.

I gave it to him. "Jamie." He gave a little start and looked down, and I realized I was still wearing the latex gloves. I peeled them off and shoved them in my pocket.

"I might ask you the same question," he said. "Why are you wearing gloves?" His suspicious gaze flitted to Maizy and back to me. "What are you two up to? You're not thinking of breaking into Dorcas's studio, are you?"

I bristled. "Of course we're—"

"I should introduce myself," Maizy said, stepping forward with her hand out. No gloves.

"I'm Emily Murdock, with the Journal of Paranormal Phenomena. You've probably seen it on newsstands."

I stared at her.

"No, I…" Weaver let her give his hand a few vigorous pumps before he took it back. He looked at me. "You brought a reporter to my sister-in-law's studio?"

"We weren't actually going up to—" I froze mid-thought. "I'm sorry, I thought—you must be Seaver."

"And she didn't bring me," Maizy cut in. "I brought her. I'm doing a piece on renowned modern psychics, and I thought I'd visit the place where this gifted woman worked."