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As we entered the gated yard, the kids gave us a brief glance, then went back to their games. The teenager watching them nodded but kept quiet. His eyes were ringed and red, and I could tell he’d been crying.
Chase knocked on the door and Claudia opened it, standing back silently as we filed into the house. She motioned to the living room, and we gingerly sat on the sofa as she quietly lowered herself into a wooden rocking chair and pulled an afghan over her legs. An older man came out—he also looked a lot like Exo—and gave us the once-over.
“Orick, this is Chief Johnson from the Faerie-Human Crime Scene Investigation team. And Delilah and Camille D’Artigo. Orick is…was…he’s Exo’s brother.” She said the last in a flurry of words infused with pain. As she said Exo’s name, she cringed, then hung her head. “Please, some tea?”
“Of course, Claudia.” Orick gave us a two-fingered salute and retreated into what was probably the kitchen.
“Excuse us for intruding, but last night you said that Exo had refused to book a convention?” Chase quietly slid out his pencil and notebook and flipped it open. He kept a gentle eye contact with Claudia, but a nonthreatening one, letting her know through body language that the lead was hers. Wise move. Very wise move. Chase had learned a lot since we first met him.
Claudia paused, then motioned to an appointment book on the coffee table. “I don’t know who it was. Like I said last night, we had a fight over the fact that he turned them down, but I was mostly concerned with the money he said no to.” She coughed, wiping her nose with a tissue.
“That sounds horrible, doesn’t it? I was worried about money…I didn’t trust his judgment and now look what happened.”
“It’s not your fault, Claudia. You didn’t do anything to cause this.” Chase started to pat her hand, then stopped, merely flashing her a gentle smile.
“Yeah, right.” She let out a shudder, then said, “You might find something in his appointment book. This happened about a week ago. It was on a Wednesday, I remember. Thursday is garbage day and I was fretting that Exo had forgotten to put the cans out. He took off for the hotel after the fight, and so I remember asking my son to do it instead.” She lingered over the words, as if simple memories of daily life could erase the pain.
“I suppose we want to look for something that seems out of the ordinary around that time.” I picked up the book as Chase continued to gently question Claudia. As I flipped through, her voice echoed softly through the room. Camille scooted close to me, peering over my shoulder.
I flipped back to a week and a half ago, starting on Monday. Nothing seemed odd there. Nor on Tuesday. But Wednesday there was a meeting penciled in between two and three p.m. The notation read V & J/The Energy Exchange.
“V & J? Van and Jaycee?” The words burst out of my mouth before I could stop them as I jerked my head up, looking at Camille.
Camille blanched, slowly shaking her head. “The Energy Exchange. Fuck. We should have checked that place out before. I knew it was trouble from the first time we saw the sign. And I’ll bet…we suspected they had something to do with it.” She looked up as Claudia leaned forward.
Claudia started. “Yes, that was the place he mentioned. I remember now, he said it was a convention for a group of…vampires? No…not vampires, but…I don’t know. I can’t remember.”
As we gathered our things to leave, taking the appointment book with us, I wondered just what we were facing. We’d suspected Van and Jaycee were involved with the club—but we’d gotten sidetracked after we shut down the Koyanni the first time. We suspected the Energy Exchange of being a hangout for the magical set—namely sorcerers. It wouldn’t surprise me if it also attracted necromancers as well. The two groups weren’t all that different. Which might just point to a connection between the pair and Telazhar.
Thanking Claudia, we exited back to the prowl car. All I could think of was I wanted this over and soon. But a creeping feeling in the back of my neck left me thinking we had a bumpy ride ahead of us.
Chapter 6
Back in the fresh air, which hung heavy with the scents of rain dripping from cedars, we paused by the children, who were playing on the swing set.
“They have no father now,” Camille said, biting her lip. “But at least they knew he loved them.”
I knew she was thinking about our own father. “True…but not all fathers can show their feelings in the right way. They’ll be okay.” I touched her arm lightly. “They have a strong mother. Claudia will continue to run the hotel. She won’t let Exo’s dream die.”
My cell jangled as I slid into the passenger seat. It was a text message from Tim Winthrop. Tim—aka Cleo Blanco, female impersonator turned computer whiz—ran the website for the Supe Community Council. I scanned his text and sighed.
“People have been overwhelming the site with e-mails—wondering what to do now. And a few of the more shallow have been whining about the dance and asking where it’s going to be held now.”
“Callous idiots, worried about a dance after what happened.” Camille leaned forward between the front seats, as far as the bulletproof glass would allow. “Frostling was right. We need to call an emergency meeting—but we’d better not advertise it. Go through the phone trees. We don’t want these freaks setting off a bomb in the main area when there’s a big gathering.”
“I don’t know why they didn’t wait till the actual dance.” I pondered the thought and the more I poked at it, the more it bothered me. “Why not?”
“Why not what?” Chase asked, pulling into the right-turn lane. We were headed to Marion’s café next.
“Why not wait until the dance? Why set off the bomb with only a handful of victims inside? Wait a few weeks and they could have had a lot more casualties. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe, maybe not. If they were going after volume, you’re right. But maybe they were looking to instill fear instead?” Chase pulled into the parking lot to the side of the Supe-Urban Café. “Let’s run with the thought that they weren’t just looking to kill Supes…what else could they want?”
“To stir up unrest?” Camille said.
“Maybe.” I thought about it for a moment. “What about to throw suspicion on somebody else? To start a hate war between the FBHs and the Supes?”
“But there was clear evidence of who created it—wouldn’t they take the trouble to hide the canya if they were trying to bring it on between the FBHs and us?” Camille shook her head. “There has to be more to it than that.”
