Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Murder boards and more!
Declan
After my startling realization about Leon’s dagger being used to kill Jim, I marched toward Leon’s tent.
“Where are you going?” Gideon asked, wrapping his arm around my shoulders and turning me away from my destination.
“I want to confront Leon. Are you coming?” I tried steering us back toward Leon’s tent, but Gideon didn’t let me. “What are you doing? We need to get him to confess. I knew he was shady. Right from the start.”
“We don’t know he did it,” Gideon said, making a point. “Anyone could have taken the dagger from his stall, just like someone took the crystal point from Elwood’s shop.”
I crossed my arms and frowned up at him. “Convince me it isn’t him.”
He sighed and wiped his hand down his face. “I’m not saying it isn’t. I’m just not saying it is. I feel like there’s something more going on here.”
“So, we should ask some more questions.”
“The only question you want to ask Leon is if he’s a murderer.”
Another raven–it’s like the little feathery beasts were following me around–cawed like it was agreeing with Gideon. Gideon frowned at it, like he didn’t understand why it was interrupting our conversation any more than I did, but then quickly dismissed it and turned his frown back on me.
My face heated. “Well… maybe. But then we’d at least be able to see his reaction.”
Gideon looked around at the crowd. It was getting surprisingly busy.
He slipped his hand in mine and gently tugged me away from everyone.
Yeah, I guessed it wasn’t the best plan to talk about murder in the middle of the festival.
And, okay, perhaps confronting Leon in front of all these people wasn’t my most well-thought-out plan.
“If we do something here, there’s a chance someone will record us,” he said quietly.
I winced. “Fine. I get it. We don’t want to end up in a viral video.
I have enough going on in my life right now.
I don’t need that, too.” I tapped my foot.
“But we can’t wait too long. The guy is on his way to becoming a serial killer.
I mean, how many people does someone have to kill to get that label? Three?”
“Let’s confront him after the festival ends tonight. That way, we can get him alone.” Gideon glanced at his phone. “And by then, we should have an update from Grady about Jim’s death, too.”
When I opened my mouth to argue, Gideon shook his head, as if he knew what I was going to say.
“He’s going to be busy here today. He won’t be able to do anything else.”
“Okay.” I heaved out a sigh. “But for the record, I sort of hate this.”
“I think we all do,” Gideon agreed. “Do you want to look at more booths?”
I’d been excited to explore everything earlier, but now I felt too distracted.
I’d known for days now that there was a murderer walking amongst us, but it was so damned surreal to realize we were in the middle of the festival with one.
Suddenly, being here was just too much. Too much noise. Too many people.
“Maybe we should check on Tulip.”
“Sure,” Gideon said.
Ugh. Why was he always so damned agreeable? It made me feel like a whiny brat.
“Thank you,” I said. I squeezed his hand. “I was having fun with you. I’m sorry that I’m changing the plans now.”
He leaned forward to rest his forehead against mine, and he raised his hand to cup the back of my neck. Some of my tension instantly ebbed away under his touch. “You don’t need to apologize. This situation is difficult for all of us.”
I closed my eyes and sank deeper into the feeling of calm he’d created. It was powerful stuff. I wondered if it was a magic thing, a wolf thing, or an us thing.
“Better?” he whispered.
I nodded and opened my eyes. “Yes. Thank you.”
A small smile teased his mouth. “Anytime.”
Then he swept his lips across mine in a chaste kiss. He was always kissing me. I liked it.
When we stepped into The Mystic Menagerie, I was surprised to find there were no customers. Was it wrong that I let out a sigh of relief?
Tulip’s hand fluttered through the air in a little wave.
“Welcome to The Mystic Menagerie,” she said slowly, enunciating each syllable clearly, as if she’d been practicing it all day. “May I help you find anything?”
Then she stared at us, as if waiting for us to say something. She didn’t blink. It was a little creepy, but I knew she was trying, so I smiled back at her.
“Thanks, Tulip. We wanted to see how everything was going here and see if you needed anything.”
She huffed out a breath. “Everyone must be at the festival. I haven’t seen a customer for hours.”
“Oh…” I wasn’t sure what to say to that. Was she feeling sad about missing the festival?
“So, I’ve been helping Eugene.” She narrowed her eyes. “You aren’t going to tell Elwood that I’m not watching the store properly, are you?”
“No, of course not,” I assured her quickly.
Gideon glanced toward the back room. “What’s Eugene doing?”
“A murder board!” she squealed. It was a high-piercing sound that’d probably carry exceptionally well underwater. But, holy crap, that was not meant to be unleashed on human ears. She could take down armies with that. I touched my ears to make sure they weren’t bleeding.
“Tulip! Stop!” Gideon snapped. “You can’t do that on land.”
“Oops!” Tulip covered her mouth with her hand. “I thought that was my quiet one.”
“Did you say a murder board?” I asked over the ringing in my ears.
“It’s amazing. Come look!” She scurried to the back of the store, and we followed.
The meeting room had been transformed. Elwood had two movable boards that people could pull out and use when they booked this room. They were ancient things I remembered him using when I was a kid. One was a whiteboard and the other a corkboard. And now, they were full of all things murder.
“Wow,” I whispered as I walked over to them. “This is like what they do in TV shows. This is awesome.”
“Good job, you two.” Gideon was nodding. “Where did you find all this?”
Eugene’s shadow shivered in the corner as if he was pleased with Gideon’s praise.
“Well, I said I helped, but it was mostly Eugene,” Tulip said.
The corkboard was covered with images and red yarn.
In the center of the board was a plan of the murder building—yeah, I probably shouldn’t call it that, but I couldn’t help it.
Along one side were details about it, including Xalvador’s obituary, which joked about his supposed treasure; Winston’s purchase contract for the building; a list of all the other businesses that’d ever been in the building; and a list of who else had bid on the building.
That was all very interesting, but my gaze kept snagging on the cartoon-like outlines of bodies in the sketch, showing where Winston and Jim’s bodies were found. The outlines overlapped. I wasn’t sure if I could ever be in that building again without thinking about those outlines.
Red yarn had been stretched from one of the outlines to a picture of Winston.
The streaky image looked like it’d been stolen from his social media and printed on Elwood’s old printer.
Winston appeared happy. He was laughing and holding a glass of red wine—or I hoped it was red wine.
Since he was a vampire, it could’ve been blood.
Another bit of string connected it to an image of a crystal like the one he’d been killed with, which then had a string to one of Elwood’s Mystic Menagerie flyers, presumably to denote where the murder weapon had come from.
The second body outline also had a red string, which linked it to a picture of Jim. Jim’s image might have been grabbed from his website. It was one of those boring headshots that didn’t show any personality. A picture of his murder weapon was there, too.
Wait. How did…?
“Are those pictures from the police reports?” Gideon asked, as if reading my thoughts.
Eugene’s shadow didn’t move, as if he was frozen in place.
“Eugene? Did you break into the police station and go through their files?”
The shadow shrank.
Gideon squeezed the bridge of his nose. “You aren’t supposed to do that. Remember all the trouble you got into when you went through the evidence boxes and started returning things to people? Grady barely kept you out of jail.”
“Umm… how do you keep a shadow in jail?” I asked. Everyone ignored me.
“But he didn’t remove anything this time.” Tulip jumped to her friend’s defense. “He just copied the originals. Right, Eugene?”
The shadow quivered as if in agreement.
“Will anyone realize you’ve been in the files?”
I don’t know how he did it, but Eugene’s shadow undulated in such a way as to suggest Gideon’s question offended him.
“You need to be careful, okay?” Gideon said, seeming to give approval to what Eugene had done.
“We have a bit of new information,” I said, pulling the conversation back to the murder boards and away from Eugene’s breaking and entering. “I’m sure the dagger that killed Jim came from Leon’s stall at the festival. So, we can add that to the board.”
Eugene’s shadow vibrated as if he was excited.
“And Lily suggested there was a love triangle between Jim, Leon, and a woman,” Gideon added. “Maybe Hazel could ask around about that.”
“Oh, right,” I said. “I was so fixated on the dagger, I forgot she said Jim stole a woman from Leon.”
Tulip snorted. “A man doesn’t steal a woman from another man. Women are not objects. A woman goes where she wishes.”
“Yes. Good point,” Gideon agreed.
Then we moved to the second board. This one was devoted to the chronology surrounding the deaths and any outstanding lines of investigation. The information was all written out in a shaky cursive with, in my opinion, an excess of loops. I had to concentrate to make sense of it.