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There went that theory. I didn’t see how Athene could get out of town if she didn’t have the key to Lucien’s car. Unless they’d come here in separate vehicles, but that scenario seemed a little far-fetched. He wouldn’t have wanted to give up the opportunity to have a captive audience during the nearly eight-hour drive from L.A.
“Well, I hope you can find her,” I said.
“I do, too,” he responded. “I’m hoping she can give me some answers. In the meantime, I’d like you to stick around.”
The request didn’t surprise me too much. I managed a wan smile. “I just opened a store. Where would I go?”
To my surprise, he offered me an answering grin. “Just covering my bases, Selena. I’ll let myself out.”
With a nod, he headed out of my office and down the hall to the apartment’s front door. A moment later, it closed quietly behind him.
Absurdly, I wished I could have thought of a reason to make him stay. Offered him lunch or something. Which I knew was beyond silly. The guy was conducting a murder investigation.
And, for the moment, I was the prime suspect.
Doing my best not to sigh, I got out my phone and called Hazel. It was already past time for our lunch date, and for all I knew, she’d already found out what had happened to Lucien, but I wouldn’t leave her hanging.
Life had never been this complicated in L.A.
7
River Adventures
“Oh, myGod!”said Josie as she sailed into the store, the watercolor-patterned scarf in tones of fuchsia and turquoise she had draped around her neck fluttering dramatically behind her. “I justheard.”
Just now?I thought.It’s been almost an hour since Calvin left. I thought you worked faster than that.
Somehow, though, I managed to give a philosophical shrug. “It’s crazy, isn’t it? I mean, I can see why the police would want to talk to me, but I didn’t have much to tell them.”
She paused in front of the display case next to the cash register, hands planted on her substantial hips. “I went and told Calvin what an upstanding citizen you were, but he only said that he wasn’t at liberty to discuss an open investigation.” Her brilliant blue eyes fastened on me, concerned…but also curious. I knew she wanted to get the inside scoop.
Since I wasn’t with the police, I didn’t have any such barriers to communication.
“I was home the whole night,” I went on. “You know how worn out I was from getting the store ready to open.”
“Yes, of course,” she said, now sounding almost impatient. “But do you have any idea who might have been involved?”
“I told Calvin to talk to Athene, Lucien’s business partner.”
“Yes, the woman who came to town with him yesterday,” Josie responded, and I looked at her, startled. Before I could ask how she’d known that, she went on, “Oh, my friend Betsy rented them the house they were staying in. She inherited it from her mother, and instead of selling it, she fixed it up as a nice little vacation rental. Actually, she asked me to help with some of the decorating, and of course, I said yes. We got the cutest — ”
“So, Lucien and Athene rented your friend’s house,” I cut in, knowing I needed to head Josie off at the pass if I didn’t want to get an intimate recounting of every stick of furniture that had gone into the Airbnb in question.
“Yes,” Josie said. She was probably so used to people interrupting her like that, she hadn’t even noticed. “She said she wished she hadn’t, because the neighbors had called to complain about the noise.”
“The noise?”
“Apparently, they were playing some kind of very loud tribal-sounding music. It went on for at least an hour. Betsy was just about to go over there — even though it was almost midnight by that point — when it finally stopped and the neighbors saw somebody drive off in a big black car.”
“Lucien’s Mercedes,” I murmured, and she tilted her head, eyes bright with interest.
“He had money?”
“Quite a bit, I think,” I said. I sounded distracted even to myself, though, because my mind had already begun to race, trying to put the pieces together. So, Lucien had been at the house until nearly midnight. My best guess about the music was that he and Athene had been using it for some sort of ritual. What kind of ritual, I didn’t know, although I had an uneasy feeling that they’d blasted the music to cover up the sound of some sort of sex ceremony.
For what purpose, though? To bind their powers together to create a spell that would compel me to follow him back to Los Angeles? I supposed that was possible, even while I didn’t want to think that Athene would voluntarily participate in such an enchantment. Or maybe she honestly didn’t care because she had no emotional attachment to Lucien at all. In that case, I guessed it was plausible that she’d go along with the scheme if it meant even greater success for GLANG in the long run.
“Have they found his car?” I asked, and Josie frowned.
