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“Thanks for sharing.”
“I…I thought you must have known. You work with Archer.”
Flynn let it slide. “Gina brought Calli here to work for the weekend. Had she done that before?”
“Yes, and she’s brought other girls too.” He grimaced. “I think it’s a bad choice, just like throwing the party. And now the Halloween Extravaganza.”
“What? I said no to that.”
Shah snorted. “Gina and Mrs. Carruthers both said yes and as they run the location, they have final say or so they keep telling me. It’s a done deal.”
Flynn’s blood pressure rocketed upward. He’d said no. It was a bad fucking idea. “Someone is dead. They can’t be serious about continuing.”
Shah shrugged. “I think it will depend on what the autopsy says. If she fell down the stairs, then I would imagine they’ll go forward with it.”
“Wonderful.” Flynn wanted to punch something. “Someone is running around killing women and we have no video of it, nor do we have any idea who it is and no one has an alibi because everyone was tucked up in bed.”
“That about sums it up.”
It hit Flynn at that moment that his alibi was Eli Fisher. If that wasn’t irony.
Donovan came sailing into the office. “Dad!” he said and then stopped short when he saw Flynn. He was visibly upset. He had the bags of pastries in his hands but his body was shaking making the bags rattle.
Shah was on his feet. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
Donovan glanced at Flynn again and he stood up. “If it’s personal I can go but if it has to do with what happened to Calli, I need to know.”
The kid glanced at his father who gave him a nod. “Someone was in my room, er, your room.” He swallowed hard. “I found some stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?” Flynn asked.
The kid turned pale. “There’s a bloody piece of cloth and some stuff…handcuffs and…things I don’t even know what you do with.” His eyes were huge, “but I know it can’t be good.”
Flynn’s stomach hit the floor. “Wait, you have a room here too?”
Donovan shook his head. “Just for last night. It got late and the weather and Dad said I could stay too so Mrs. Carruthers gave me a room on the third floor but I was kind of…” his cheeks flushed. “I watched too many horror movies and I was…a bit freaked out so I asked if we could switch. I know my dad’s room and with all of the haunting stuff, it’s just…I knew that room was safe. I didn’t know anything about the room on the third floor. So Dad and I switched. I slept in his room, and he slept in the one Mrs. Carruthers made up for me.”
“Tell me from the beginning what happened,” Shah said. He pointed to a second guest chair and they all sat down again.
Donovan sat but his legs bounced and he couldn’t keep his hands still. “So, I went into town like you said and got the pastries.” He glanced down at the bags that were still in his lap and then put them on the desk. “Anyway, when I got back, I needed to take a leak, so I went up to your room. I was coming out of the bathroom when I saw the cloth sticking out from underneath your bed. I didn’t think. I just bent down and picked it up and that’s when I saw the blood. I was completely freaked. Then I looked around and saw someone had put some weird shit—sorry, Dad—in the room. A set of handcuffs. And some crazy-looking stuff. They were hidden under the bed. I called you but you didn’t answer your cell. So I came down here to get you.”
“I’m so sorry, son. Are you okay?” Shah was first and foremost a father.
Flynn however was not. “You’re sure you’ve never seen the stuff before?”
Donovan nodded.
“Did you meet up with Calli last night? Maybe you thought it would be fun to have sex with her?”
The kid looked so stricken that Flynn had to try hard not to laugh. A virgin. Good for him.
“N-no w-way. She’s sort of scary. I mean she was.” He immediately looked stricken again. “I’m sorry Dad, I know I’m not supposed to speak ill of the dead.”
“It’s okay son, we know what you mean.”
A sudden thought hit Flynn. “What are the detectives doing?”
“Merritt?” Shah asked. “He was interviewing people.”
