“Yet.”
I raised both eyebrows. “Excuse me?”
“Can I tell you what I think?”
“You’re going to tell me whether I’m interested or not.”
“I think,” Sinclair said, “there’s something hinky about the scene of the Habel crime. Something the cops can’t put their finger on. So they asked you, because you’re smart—smarter than them. And if that’s true, the murder is related to all this.” He paused to wave one hand at the organized chaos of the Emporium’s showroom floor. “The curious and bizarre. And someone, Mr. Snow, wants your attention. Badly.”
“I think you should leave.”
“You didn’t say anything during the Curiosities and Bones cases, and you and Detective Winter nearly died both times. Maybe that’s not the way to go about this mystery. Maybe this time you should put this psycho on blast. Call them out in front of the entire city.” Sinclair gave the business card I was still clutching a small nod. “And I can give you that megaphone.”
In response, I tore the business card in two and said calmly, “Goodbye, Mr. Sinclair.”
CHAPTER SIX
I leaned against the Emporium’s locked door after seeing Sinclair out. The showroom was empty. Louis Armstrong had come to an end, and someone—Max—had snuck an obnoxious song on the playlist—something about a “pink hotel,” which I was quite certain was not a reference to interior decorating. I replayed what Sinclair had said about someone wanting my attention. It’d admittedly freaked me out more than I cared to admit, but it wasn’t true. Itcouldn’tbe true. Nothing about the last twenty-four hours had anything to do with me. And it wasn’t like if some nut really had been orchestrating this whole murder investigation, they could have predicted the police would turn to me as a consultant. In fact, based on my history with the NYPD, no one in their right mind would have expected Ferguson to show up on my doorstep, spiritoscope in-hand. It was like playing six-to-five blackjack on the Strip and thinking you’d walk away with more cash.
Just a stupid assumption.
Sinclair was mistaken. He’d based our current situation on past events and postulated instead of researched. Okay, yes, he’d been right thatwhoI was and where my expertise lay had been a factor with both Brigg and Asquith, but it hadn’t been true of Andrews or White. So it was impossible—no,absurd—to say the death of Sandra Habel had anything to do with me. Because once you laid out the facts, they told a story different from what Sinclair hypothesized. He wanted the scoop on my presence. He wanted to make a name for himself off the back of my relationship and personal safety. The bastard was making a mountain out of a molehill.
I pushed off the door and wove around displays on my way to the office.
Rosie D, the feisty Yelp reviewer, was still niggling at the back of my brain. Something about it—the anger, the hurt, the betrayal, coupled with the timing of those one-star reviews—it rubbed me the wrong way. If I was a cop, I’d want to speak with Rosie as a possible person of interest. Had she known Sandra in-person? Was she a client? A friend? A lover? Or was it not about a personal connection and instead those reviews were something more… crafty? A competitor trying to bury Sandra’s business? That was certainly not unheard of. Maybe they had a relationship along the lines of mine and Greg Thompson’s. Granted ours didn’t come with a murder-y vibe—not that Greg didn’t feel homicidal around me, I’m sure.
I stepped over Dillon, who was sprawled in the doorway, and sat down at the computer. I jostled the mouse to wake the screen, navigated to the internet, then typed a few keywords into the search bar: Rosie D, Hell’s Kitchen, NYC, psychic. I wasn’t anywhere near as skilled at online sleuthing as Max, but my gut was convinced that this Rosie D character needed to be checked out. Sure, if the police could convince a judge there was enough here, they could get a warrant for the owner of the Rosie D username, but that was going to take time. And for the sake of the investigation, my safety, and Calvin’s sanity, it was time we didn’t have.
A Google search wouldn’t hurt anyone.
I pushed my glasses up and leaned forward to read the first page of website results: Rosie Demar, MD, a dermatologist on the Upper East Side. Rosalyn “Rosie” DiPierro, a real estate agent with commercial space listings in Hell’s Kitchen. Third on the list was an actual Rosie D, also referred to as Badass Slugger Bitch, which, fuck me if I knew what that meant before I realized it was a reference to some video-game character with a chest that looked extremely top-heavy and who fought with a baseball bat.
There were half a dozen more pseudo-Rosie D results after those, but none that I could finger as a concrete connection to the Yelp reviewer. I tweaked the keywords, tried the search without the neighborhood, reduced it to “psychics near me,” per Google’s suggestion, even simply “Rosie D NYC,” but nada. She might have had a social media presence, but that was a whole other ecosystem of the internet to explore, and one that I had next to no experience with. I wasn’t even sure if I knew the Emporium’s log-in details for all the platforms we were on now. Would Max get notified if I tried brute-forcing my way into the accounts? Probably. I bet he had some “your boss is an idiot” safeguard on our pages.
I huffed loud enough to get Dillon’s attention, then navigated my way back to the beginning: Madam Sandra’s Yelp page. I sorted the lowest ratings to the top, scrolled past Rosie D, then checked out some of the older negative comments. They read like pretty standard lowball reviews any business could receive: the hours sucked, the Madam was an up-seller, she burned too much sage—okay, that last one was a bit more industry-specific, but still.
I’d nearly closed out of the browser in frustration before a fragment of a sentence caught my eye:ask for Rose. I hovered my finger over the screen where the month-old review began, and read more carefully. Accusations of the Madam asking too many vague questions, constructing a reading based on the responses of her customer, and leaving the woman unsatisfied and feeling swindled out of several hundred dollars. I whistled absently, murmured an apology when I heard Dillon jump to his feet like he thought it was time for a walk, then came to the full sentence in question:I’m going back to Midtown Mediums. I recommend them instead—ask for Rose, she was great for my first experience.
“Found you,” I murmured. I opened a second tab, searched for Midtown Mediums, and pulled up an address only a few blocks away from the Madam’s. What were the odds? I took out my cell and dialed their number.
An enthusiastic woman answered the call with, “Midtown Mediums, we offer combo packages for parties of three or more, and tarot readings are fifty percent off every Tuesday and Thursday. This is Harmony. How may I guide you today?”
Good God, did I hate the business spiels before we’d even talked business.
“Yeah, hi. I, uh… does Rose work here? Someone recommended I see her for… erm… I don’t know what to call it—a séance?”
Harmony tittered. “No, sir, we don’t conductséances. We offer readings—tarot readings, love readings, past-life readings, astrology readings, spirit readings…. If you’re specifically looking to speak with a loved one who has passed on, that would be our spirit reading, which Rose currently offers.”
“How much is a reading with Rose?”
“Can you really put a price on connecting with the other side?” Harmony countered.
“If the cost of being dead outweighs that of being alive, yeah.”
Harmony didn’t like that, and she said in a slightly clipped tone, “Four hundred per session.”
“I’d rather pay city taxes,” I concluded.
