“Only in the beginning. I made this connection on my own.”
“You don’t even know the keyboard shortcuts for copy and paste.”
“One more dig and you’re off afternoon delight for a week.” I caught a tiny smile cross Calvin’s face before he managed to hide it. I went to the bookshelf and grabbed a second title on collectable flatware, then added Robert Hare’s book to my armload. “Full disclosure—I did talk to Rose.”
“Sebastian.”
I shrugged. “I was getting a reading. I think Ms. Jacobsen was trying to communicate from the afterlife. ‘Sebastian Snow… your copy ofThe Mystery of the Hidden Beachis twenty-five years past due!’” I said in a grouchy, old-lady librarian voice while wiggling the fingers on my free hand like a spooky specter. “I also asked Rose about the spiritoscope, but she refused to talk at that point. Still… if anyone is going to be familiar with the history of that device, wouldn’t someone who makes a living as a modern-day medium make you think twice?”
“It could be a coincidence,” Calvin answered. “Coincidences do happen.” He tapped the notebook and asked, before I could raise a counterargument, “You think she had the means?”
“Well, the two shops are only a few blocks apart, and they’re both open late, so Rose could have known Sandra’s schedule and would have been in the area at the time of her murder.”
“You’re assuming Sandra was killed late Monday night.”
“Am I wrong?”
Calvin seemed oddly proud as he said, “No, you’re not. ME puts her time of death at eleven o’clock Monday night.”
“Rose definitely has motive too,” I continued. “Says that Sandra bullied her way into already-claimed territory and has been undercutting Midtown Mediums’ prices and taking clients. Plus, all of the nasty reviews Rose left on Sandra’s business page came within the last week.”
“The timing is curious,” Calvin admitted. He held the notebook up a second time. “Why’s this say Sinclair?”
“He’s, uh, the other… person of interest.”
Calvin tossed the pad to the couch and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t like him either—”
“It’s not because I don’t like him,” I corrected. “Which, for the record, is closer to legitimate despisement.”
Calvin removed his cell from his pocket just then, looked at the caller ID, and said before answering, “I think these killings are a lot closer to home—hey, Quinn. Yeah, he’s fine. Everything’s okay. I’m on my way back …Really?” Calvin glanced at me. He lowered the phone, tapped Speaker, then said, “Run that by me again.”
“The background check on Brad Habel came in,” Quinn said, a slight crackle undercurrent in her voice, indicative of a hot mic. “His current employer is a place in Hell’s Kitchen—Midtown Mediums.”
In June, the sun didn’t set in New York City until at least 8:30 p.m. We’d left the East Village with Calvin driving uptown on First Avenue until reaching Forty-Seventh, where I told him to turn west, and then we were hitting that magic hour head-on. I understood the theoretics behind the phrase—the setting sun and the moments that followed, low shadows, evenly dispersed lighting, and the sky producing colors that gave off a whimsical,magicalsensation. In practicality, of course, I didn’t understand why people gathered to watch the sky. For me, the vivid and stark contrasts of the blacks and whites and grays that made up my life softened during the evening, mixing together until it was a sort of hodge-podge mess, like dirty water after playing with finger paints as a child.
“Is it pretty tonight?” I asked.
Sunglasses met mine and Calvin said with a nod, “Yes.”
“What do we have?”
“Peach,” Calvin said, motioning low on the horizon with one hand. “Then strawberry—well, no, it’s more pink…oh, dragon fruit.” Then he raised his hand to indicate near the stars. “Blueberry.”
“Peach, dragon fruit, blueberry,” I repeated.
He nodded again.
Since I was a kid, I’d always asked for practical comparisons when talking about colors.Red like what? Blue like what?It didn’t make seeing colors any more a reality than it had thirty seconds before, but knowing how a peach or a dragon fruit looked to me in an everyday setting—that unique shade of gray I could associate with it—made the concept of something intangible—magic hour—real.
“So it’s a fruit cocktail kind of night.”
Calvin laughed. “Which avenue is it, baby?”
“Tenth,” I answered, sitting up straighter as we approached the intersection. I pointed to my right and added, “It’s next to a preppy-bro-bar masquerading as an understated Irish pub.”
“I don’t know what it says about me that I knew exactly which bar you were describing.” Calvin double-parked behind a second car with its hazards on outside of Midtown Mediums.
I watched Quinn get out from behind the wheel and Radcliff emerge from the passenger seat. I unbuckled my seat belt and popped the door open. Quinn dropped the butt of a cigarillo and stomped it out with her shoe. She blew the last of the smoke off to one side and gave one of those cool-as-a-cucumber nods of acknowledgment. Radcliff, on the other hand, smiled his Future Politician smile and waved like a dumbass.
