Chapter 9
Chapter
Nine
Franklin
I stared at the aerial map of the Trafalgar property. It was scary what you could find online these days. Useful, but frightening. There really was no such thing as privacy. The fact that so many necromancers had managed to go off grid was impressive.
“Do you see anything?” Boone asked while leaning across the console. He’d unfastened his seatbelt and was practically staring over my shoulder. He was slender enough to pull it off. Given my bulk, I would have made the move look awkward and probably gotten stuck.
I expanded a portion of the map, blowing it up and exposing a possible road. “That’s a possibility.” I shrank the screen again, shifting to another section of the property and repeating the process. “That one is too.” They were on opposite ends of the property, and I figured would take about thirty, maybe forty minutes to circle.
Wiggling back into his seat, Boone chewed on his bottom lip. We were idling in a fast-food parking lot. Boone had already demolished his breakfast sandwich and hashbrown. His soft drink was well on the way to meeting a similar fate. It always amazed me how much food he could pack away. He’d told me once it was his necromancer metabolism. While I didn’t know much about that, there had to be something in his genetic make-up that allowed him to inhale twice as much food as me and remain two-thirds my size.
“What’s on your mind?” I asked while enlarging my section of interest further.
“Maybe we should have contacted his mom first,” Boone answered. It was on option we’d discussed and eventually dismissed. Neither of us knew why there were no pictures or mention of her necromancer son on all her social media sites. On the surface, it was a poor omen regarding family relations. But I’d been a detective long enough to know that not everything was what it appeared to be. There could be a multitude of reasons why Roberta Trafalgar made no current mention of Leander. Shame was only one of them.
Resting my hand on Boone’s thigh, I said, “If we don’t find anything today, we’ll give that a try.”
Boone’s nod of acceptance was my answer. Contacting Roberta Trafalgar was risky. There were too many unknowns. If they were still on good terms, she could tip Leander off and he might double down, head out of town, and go even more MIA. While turning up unannounced wasn’t great either, I figured at least that way we might stand a chance of finding and speaking with the man before he turned tail and bolted.
All that was assuming Leander Dun kept to necromancer tradition and spurned society. Not that I blamed them. Most of us tended to respond in kind to the way we were treated. Society turned their back on necromancers so those that survived did the equivalent. It wasn’t psych 101 rocket science.
Pulling out of the parking lot, I got back on the road, headed for our first possible route into the wooded acreage. Given how remote it was, I figured it would take twenty-five, maybe thirty minutes to get there. The trip from Mississippi had already taken four hours. Boone and I’d left before the crack of dawn and it was now a little after ten a.m.
While I wouldn’t call either of us morning people , neither of us were horrid either. We were mutually quiet. It was the relaxing kind of silence that settled into your skin like a weighted blanket. Now that Boone had some caffeine and sugar in his system, his energy picked up, as did his conversation. I intently listened as he told me about his conversation with Detective Cardoza, and I made a mental note to look the man up when I got back to the police station. He sounded decent, but a little background information was never a bad idea.
When he finished explaining that conversation, Boone started in on Janet Meeker. “She sounded nice enough in the beginning, but towards the end…” Out of the corner of my eye I saw Boone shake his head. “I don’t like it when people are that desperate. That level of need is never a good thing.”
“Is it need or want?”
“Good question. I’ll let you know when I find out.”
“So, you’re taking the job?” I never liked it when Boone took jobs he wasn’t comfortable with.
He shrugged. “I don’t have a reason not to. Yet. I’ve got a few days to look into things more. My preliminary research backs up what she said. Legally, I can’t access Janet’s granddaddy’s will.” Boone huffed. “I need to stop calling him that.”
“What? Granddaddy ?”
“Yeah. The man has a name.”
“And that would be?”
“Eugene Duncan Meeker. Although from what I can find, most of his friends called him Gene.” I was used to Boone using someone’s full name, but mostly when he called a soul back. Boone said names held power and he was able to grasp someone’s full name by following the string that attached their soul to their remains. At least that’s how he’d explained it to me. I wasn’t sure if this string or thread was something Boone visually saw or simply felt. I’d thought about asking him and maybe someday I would. I couldn’t imagine what it was like, feeling so solitary. While I didn’t hang out with other detectives on the regular, we did speak and it was nice knowing that if I was stuck or simply needed to bounce ideas off someone, there were others around to talk with. I had professional support. That wasn’t something Boone was familiar with. He forged his own path through untested waters.
Boone continued while I remained silent. “Looks like Gene Meeker passed about a month ago. I found his obituary. By the way, it was one of those long-winded ones.” Boone blew out a heavy breath. “It was hard to tell if the man was a saint or a sinner. Like most of us, probably a healthy dose of both. Do me a favor, Franklin. If I go before you, just write something simple for my obit.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You know what I find amusing about this horribly morbid conversation? The fact that you think your momma or pops will allow me to write one word of your obituary.” God willing, Boone would outlive his human momma. That wasn’t the case with his warlock father.
Boone’s chuckle lifted my spirits. “Gaia, you’re right.” Sinking down into his seat, Boone leaned his head back and grinned. The temps were mild today, and Boone was wearing a heavy hoodie with a suspicious stain on the central pocket. His pants were threadbare and appeared comfortable. His sneakers held a thin coat of dried mud. It was a hazard of his work environment. Cemeteries didn’t always have well-tended grounds.
Rubbing his hands over his face, Boone groaned. “I can just imagine it now. Pops will take out a full page add in the local paper. Hell, he’ll probably commission a billboard.”
I couldn’t disagree. “It will be tastefully done,” I attempted to placate. “He’ll probably even create a new charm in your name.”
Boone’s bark of laughter made me grin. “I shouldn’t laugh. This is a dark topic.”
“Eh, I’m a homicide detective and you’re a necromancer. If we can’t talk about death without freaking out, then there’s no hope for us.”
When I glanced at Boone, the smile lighting up his face nearly stole my breath. “Gaia, I love you,” he said with absolutely no preamble. “You know that, right?”
I did. “And I love you.” Grasping Boone’s hand, I entwined our fingers and brought his knuckles close enough I could lean over and kiss them. I’d been thinking Boone needed a piece of jewelry decorating his left hand, his ring finger in particular. Our current conversation drove home an important point. None of us knew how much time we had on this side of the veil. It was beyond stupid wasting it.
“There.” Boone pointed with his free hand. “Is that a driveway?”
I slowed to a near crawl, earning a deserved horn blast from the car behind me. Ignoring their legitimate irritation, I turned onto the gravel path that might or might not be a driveway. It was narrow, bumpy, and barely cleared. Baren branches scratched along the side of my vehicle, making me cringe. Hopefully they were small, and it wasn’t as bad as it sounded.
“Pops probably has a charm that can fix that,” Boone said, reading my mind regarding the paint job.
I grunted but remained focused on the path. My SUV crawled along, splashing through a shallow creek. Technically, Boone and I were trespassing. There was no way someone would believe we’d simply made a wrong turn and were lost.
Boone leaned forward in his seat, holding onto the dash as the SUV dipped and swayed. “If this is his drive, then it’s a shitty one.” Boone grunted as the vehicle hit a deceptively deep hole.
If this wasn’t the correct path, I sincerely hoped there would be someplace at the end to turn around and head back out. I wasn’t horrible in reverse, but I didn’t relish the thought of navigating backwards down this treacherous path.
I couldn’t imagine how suffocating the woods would be in the summer when the trees and weeds were fully leafed out. Had it been any other season than late fall or winter, I wouldn’t have seen the small cottage up ahead until we were practically on top of it.
It wasn’t the cottage or Boone’s gasp that pulled me up short. It was the large man suddenly standing in front of me, a double-barreled shotgun pointed at my windshield.