“You and your hard head scared that son of a bitch off before he had a chance to do serious damage to my business.”
“Hearing Beth swear is like my grandma swearing,” Max piped up.
Beth turned and pointed a finger at him. “Watch it, young man.”
“Sorry, grandma.”
“You shouldn’t be open today,” she chastised while turning back to me. “Health comes first. You need to be resting.”
“I’ve rested plenty,” I insisted politely. “I’m fine, really.”
Beth pursed her lips and put her hands on her hips. “Things sure are getting strange around here. These break-ins, and what’s all this with Edgar Allan Poe?”
“That’s a long story,” I said, glancing at Max, who had to have told Beth everything.
Max motioned at himself and shook his head before pointing at the tall stranger.
Beth noticed and waved at the dark-haired man. “Greg here was telling us about his run-in.”
“Greg?” I echoed.
The tall man approached us while saying, “Greg Thompson. We met earlier this year. Maybe you don’t remember me.”
Oh. Mr. Oddities. “No, I remember you,” I replied with a polite smile while shaking his hand.That you were a dick, I added thoughtfully to myself.
“Word has gotten out that you’ve also got a guy knocking at your door about Poe,” Greg said to me.
“Whose word is that?” I asked cautiously.
“Cops and newspapers,” Greg replied, as if he couldn’t believe I didn’t know that already.
“Newspaper?”
Max wandered over to the three of us, holding up a folded paper. “Look, it made the news, Seb. They didn’t know it was you that got attacked, but they mention Beth’s shop and your old boss! He waskilled!”
“That sexy detective from the newspaper interview even came over,” Beth added.
I had taken the newspaper from Max and paused to ask, “Sexy detective?”
Max smirked but didn’t say anything.
Beth nodded. “Tall guy, built out of rock.”
“Detective Winter,” Greg added helpfully.
“I’d do him in a heartbeat,” Beth stated.
Max started laughing.
I cleared my throat and hid my face behind the newspaper. It was hard to read without a magnifying glass, but I got the gist of it, recapping the murder of both Merriam and Mike, as well as mentioning my shop and the break-in at Beth’s. The reporter was doing his best to link all of the stories, despite the interview with Calvin, where he was quoted as refusing to give up the names of certain individuals, for the sake of their safety.
Great. Either Calvin didn’t want reporters harassing me, or he suspected what I did—this wasn’t over and I was still a target.
“Maybe it’s my eyes,” I said, looking up at Greg, “but I don’t see you mentioned in this article.”
“A harassing phone call is hardly as interesting as a pig’s heart or dead cat,” he stated.
Something about Greg’s story wasn’t right. I know I don’t have any real detective training to back up my statement, just an apparent hard-on for cops and a joy of reading silly mysteries in my free time, but even Calvin had admitted to it being strange. Why would the killer suddenly speak to a potential victim? Why would he put himself out there—make himself vulnerable to being caught? Police can trace phones, zero in on where the call was made, stake out the area, all of that.
