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I allowed myself an inward smile at the incongruity of my grandmother — whose spirit looked barely forty — calling someone who was only five or six years younger a “boy.”
Especially since the “boy” in question was a solid six feet, four inches of muscular hotness.
“Yes, he is,” I agreed, and left it at that. “But there was something else I needed to know — who killed Lilith Black?”
At once, her mouth tightened ever so slightly. “I can’t tell you that.”
Can’t, or won’t?I thought, although I didn’t ask the question out loud. In the spirit world, those were often the same things. My fingers tightened on the crystal ball as I asked, “Why not?”
Her expression softened. “My dear, I am here to be your guide, but I can’t do everything for you. What I can say is that you already know everything you need to know. All you have to do now is put the pieces together.”
Easy for her to say. She’d been observing all these events as a dispassionate onlooker, while I was embroiled in the thick of things. My first instinct was to pin the crime on Doug Snyder, but I also had to remind myself that just because I disliked the guy for getting involved with someone way too young and inexperienced for him, it didn’t mean he was a killer.
“Not even a teeny little hint?” I asked, and Grandma Ellen smiled.
“Not even that. My dear, you are a very strong psychic. It’s just that sometimes, you get in your own way. I’ve seen that you’re no longer under suspicion, so there’s no reason to have desperation drive you. Let yourself be open to the knowledge you already possess.”
I wanted to snap that her advice sounded like the typical woo-woo counsel any cut-rate psychic would offer when she didn’t actually have any true insights to give. However, that would be incredibly rude — and probably wrong as well. Just because I didn’t like what she was saying didn’t mean her words weren’t valid.
Holding in a sigh, I said, “I’ll do my best.”
A smile still curved her lips as she replied, “That’s all anyone can expect from themselves. Trust in the process, Selena. You can do this.”
After delivering those words, she faded from view. I still clutched the crystal ball, but I knew if I tried to summon her again, she wouldn’t respond.
It looked like I’d have to do this on my own.
16
Pillow Talk
Well,first things first. I wasn’t feeling particularly insightful or clever, and so I figured the best thing for me to do until inspiration struck was to make myself some herbal tea and take a breath, then assess.
Archie was still asleep on his chair in the living room when I emerged from the office. I took a brief detour to pick up my phone from the coffee table and see if I’d missed any messages or texts, but my phone remained stubbornly silent.
Right then, I really wished I could be with Calvin as he and his team pored over the contents of Lilith’s laptop and phone. Maybe one of those items contained a piece of evidence that wouldn’t make any sense to the tribal police but would immediately jump out at me.
Or maybe you won’t be able to see anything, either,I scolded myself as I headed into the kitchen, then filled the kettle with water and set it to boil.It’s not like you’re some great forensic data analyst or something.
True enough. But my grandmother seemed to think I had all the necessary facts at my disposal, even if right then I couldn’t figure out what they could possibly be.
Frowning, I got a mug out of the cupboard and then found some of my favorite herbal tea, the fragrant one with rose hips and lemon and a hint of vanilla. As edgy as I was feeling, I knew that having any more caffeine after the iced tea I’d drunk at lunch probably wasn’t a good idea.
I watched my cheerful blue kettle and pondered the problem. The manner of Lilith’s killing seemed to suggest it had been a spur-of-the-moment sort of thing, and not the kind of crime that had been premeditated in any way. Someone had been pushed over the edge, and had lashed out.
Which seemed to tell me it had to have been someone who knew her. I suppose if one of her diehard fans had found out she was a complete charlatan, the revelation might have been enough to send someone into a murderous rage…but that explanation somehow didn’t feel right to me.
Besides, if one of those anonymous attendees at her ritual really was guilty, I knew we’d have a heck of a time trying to discover who they were.
Better to stick with a much smaller — and more plausible — pool of suspects.
I’d been dismissive of Tansy, but maybe I should reexamine the possibility that she was guilty. People could manage all sorts of crazy feats of strength when pushed to the limit. Yes, the angle of attack seemed wrong, but maybe she’d jumped off a tree stump or something.
Despite the seriousness of the situation, I couldn’t help grinning at the thought of Tansy launching herself at Lilith from a stump like some sort of rabid flying squirrel. The theory did seem a little crazy.
All right, then Doug Snyder. He was certainly big enough to have overpowered Lilith. No, he wasn’t as muscular as Calvin, who looked like he might chop a cord of wood for fun — and for all I knew, maybe he did. There was certainly enough firewood piled up on the side of his house for that notion to be entirely plausible.
But even though Doug didn’t exactly have the appearance of a man who chopped down trees in his spare time, he seemed fit enough, like someone who put in an hour at the gym every day not because he enjoyed it, but because he wanted to present a certain physical image to his clients. And he was definitely enough taller than Lilith that he could have sunk a knife into her back at the proper angle without any problem. He’d said he didn’t care that she was planning to fire him, but those words could have been merely bravado. After all, he definitely didn’t seem like the sort of man who would want to admit any kind of defeat. Maybe it was true that he had lots of other clients on the line…and maybe it wasn’t. Even so, having someone like Lilith Black fire you wasn’t going to look too great on a resume.
