That brought Reece up short. He looked over at the other man, but Grayson’s eyes might as well have been a vault. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Mr. Stone doesn’t and shouldn’t,” Grayson said, in his inscrutable voice. “Nor should Detective St. James. And you most of all have got no business trusting me.”
Reece quickly turned and stared out the windshield, needing to look anywhere but Grayson’s blank eyes. “I don’t understand.”
“You don’t need to understand. You just need to believe me.” Grayson settled in his seat. “Pioneer Square. Best get going, it’s gonna take us an hour to get there with an empath behind the wheel.”
Jamey stood next to her car door and sent a quick text to Agent Nolan. Did she want the Feds following Reece? No. But had Grayson just shown he couldn’t be trusted to keep his handcuffs to himself? Absolutely.
As she climbed into her Charger her phone rang, a number she didn’t recognize on-screen. She answered. “St. James.”
“It’s Aisha Easterby. Grayson didn’t want to tell you in front of your brother, but there’s been another murder.”
Shit. Jamey turned the engine over. “Just tell me where to go.”
Not thirty minutes later, Jamey was pulling up to the customer parking area in front of a shady diner only a few miles from her own home. The blinds had been drawn, the neon24 hourssign turned off, and the windows papered with signs proclaiming the diner to be closed.
The door opened as she approached, bell jingling loudly. Easterby propped it open with her body, still dressed in the lab coat over jeans, this time with a messenger bag slung over her shoulder.
“Think we’ll ever have a conversation that’s not prompted by a corpse?” said Jamey.
“No,” Easterby said. “I’m an ME. All my conversations happen because of corpses. Why do you think I have to ask other people for secondhand phone numbers?”
Inside the diner, Jamey recognized a few of the faces of those scurrying around, members of the team that had been at Jason Owens’ home. The diner itself was instantly forgettable, the same cheap booths and barstool-lined counter as any other dive she’d been in. Although the bright red blood splattering the endless white Formica—that was admittedly different. “Where’s the body?”
“Bodies. Chad Martin, the owner. Anton Webber, the cook. And Oliver Keith, a server.” Easterby pitched her voice low enough no one would have been able to overhear. “Best we can reconstruct, Oliver Keith went out to tell the driver of a red i8 to move the car. Then he came back in and attacked his boss with a vegetable peeler.”
“Well, shit,” Jamey muttered.
“The cook tried to interfere.” Easterby winced. “It didn’t go well.”
“Keith killed them both?” Jamey asked, and Easterby nodded. “And how did Keith himself die?”
“Heart failure. Probably caused by lethal levels of rage.” Easterby gestured toward the back. “Bodies are in the kitchen. And this time, there’s a witness.”
After a quick look at the bloody mess in the kitchen, Jamey pushed out through the delivery door to the alley at the back. Easterby tagged just behind her as they approached a nondescript SUV parked in the alley next to the dumpster.
The witness, Penelope Morton, was younger than Jamey, with brown hair slipping out of its ponytail. She was slumped on the edge of the open hatch, a gray blanket around her shoulders and her nose and eyes bright red. Over the dumpster’s unpleasant stench, Jamey could just make out the smell of tears and orange juice.
“No badge,” Easterby muttered as they approached, again for Jamey’s ears alone.
Jamey frowned. “But I have to—”
“You’re not here with the police,” Easterby whispered. “Like it or not, you’re here on behalf of the Dead Man.”
Jamey wrinkled her nose, but she didn’t pull out her badge as she came up to the witness. “Miss Morton?”
“Penny.” She sniffed loudly as her gaze swept over Jamey. “Who are you? Another cop?”
What cops? There was no one here but Stone Solutions lackeys. Easterby elbowed Jamey then, so she bit it back. “My name’s Briony St. James. I just want to know what happened here.”
Penny pulled the blanket more tightly closed and looked at the ground next to Jamey’s feet. “Some fancy red sports car was parked in the customer parking for like half an hour without coming in. No one else was coming in either, so Ollie went out to tell them to leave. Then he came back in and went into the kitchen where Mr. Martin was chewing out Anton. And then—then—”
Her voice broke, and she squeezed her eyes shut. Jamey furrowed her brow. “Then what?”
Easterby cleared her throat. “Then Penny here was very smart. She hid under a booth and called 911.”
Smart, yes—except Stone Solutions had showed up while the actual emergency responders heard nothing.
