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“Not at the moment,” Calvin replied mildly. “But this is an open investigation, and I might still have some questions. And if you think of anything you want to add, give me a call.” He paused to pull a business card out of his pocket, then handed it to Doug before adding, “Thanks for your cooperation, and have a good day.”
He nodded at the both of them before heading to the front door, with me at his heels. Once we were outside, I said, “You honestly think they’re innocent?”
“I’m not sure ‘innocent’ is the right word,” he said, then pointed the key fob at his SUV and unlocked the door. “But I also don’t think they killed Lilith Black, even if they might have had a motive.”
“So, what now?” I asked.
By that point we were both inside the vehicle and buckling our seat belts. His shoulders lifted, even as he touched a finger to the ignition button.
“Now?” he said, and paused. From the set of his mouth, I could tell he wasn’t happy. “Now, we’re back to square one.”
14
Public Displays of Affection
For some reason,I’d never realized how frustrating police work could be. I suppose I’d naïvely thought that you followed an orderly set of clues and then ended up with a suspect. No muss, no fuss.
But although Calvin and I had learned a few interesting things during our interview with Doug Snyder and Tansy McCall, none of them seemed particularly actionable.
And then Calvin startled me by asking, “Buy you an early lunch?”
I sneaked a sideways glance at him. His focus was on the road, but I thought I detected something a bit too casual about the way his hands rested on the steering wheel. “Being seen in public with me?” I asked, trying not to sound too incredulous. “Isn’t that kind of a big step?”
He didn’t crack a smile. “Maybe. But I don’t want to sneak around. If we’re going to do this, then we need to be up front about it.”
By “doing this,” I assumed he meant try to have a normal relationship. And that meant going out to lunch.
“Oh, we’re definitely doing this,” I said firmly, even as I was doing a happy dance inside. “And lunch sounds great.”
“Good. Is The Flatiron all right, or would you rather go to Olamendi’s for Mexican?”
“The Flatiron is fine,” I replied, even though I couldn’t help but feel a slight stir of unease at the thought of eating there. After all, it was while I waited at that particular restaurant for Lucien to join me for a late breakfast that Calvin had showed up and taken me in for questioning regarding the GLANG leader’s murder.
Speaking of which….
“What was with the hardline questioning yesterday morning?” I inquired. “You had me thinking you really did believe I murdered Lilith Black.”
A smile finally made an appearance on his lips. Not a big one, but enough to show my question had had an impact. “Sorry about that,” he said. “I guess it was rougher on me seeing you like that than I’d expected. You looked so tired and fragile. I just wanted to hold you and tell you everything was going to be okay, even though I knew I needed to stay impartial and that I couldn’t do anything so personal. So I suppose I over-compensated.”
“Yeah, just a little.” Still, I couldn’t be too angry with him. He’d known he needed to stay far away from me, and yet his first impulse had been to take me in his arms.
Just as I’d been longing to hold him at that exact same moment.
He let go of the steering wheel with his right hand and reached over so he could give my fingers a little squeeze. “I knew you couldn’t have killed her. She’d given you plenty of reasons, but you’re just not that kind of person.”
Whereas I wasn’t sure Lilith Black wouldn’t have been capable of murder, if our roles had been reversed. I reflected it was probably a good thing that she hadn’t actually practiced magic, because I could see her going down the left-hand path without too much hesitation.
“And that puts us right back to the problem of who actually did the deed,” I said as Calvin pulled into the parking lot at The Flatiron. “And why.”
Since at that point it was only a little after eleven, there weren’t too many cars around. Generally, I didn’t eat lunch before twelve-thirty or even one, but I’d only had a cup of Chobani and some fruit for breakfast, so I was ready for something more substantial.
“I know,” Calvin replied. He put the SUV in park but didn’t turn off the engine, instead leaving the motor running so we could have the benefit of the A/C. “And the problem is, although we interviewed as many of the attendees as we could, a lot of them weren’t even staying in town. They drove here from the Phoenix area and disappeared as soon as the ritual was over. Tracking them down is going to be almost impossible.”
“What about the tickets Lilith sold? Wouldn’t you have credit card records or something?”
He shook his head. “She gave them away, same as you did. It made her look charitable, when she really makes most of her money from the monetization of her YouTube channel and endorsements on her Instagram account. There wasn’t even a sign-in or anything like that where we could’ve at least collected email addresses or phone numbers.”
That extra information did make our current situation seem even more dire. I was kind of surprised there was no type of accounting for who showed up, but I reminded myself that I hadn’t provided any kind of check-in at my ritual, either. Not that I’d needed one, since all of my attendees had defected to go to Lilith’s ceremony.
