Fastening the Grave (Kali James Book 1) Page 5

  Bennie and I normally had a standing appointment on nights Howl was open. While he was perfectly capable of applying his own makeup, he preferred to have me do it. I welcomed both the steady income and the easy camaraderie we’d developed. He missed yesterday’s appointment, but given the circumstances, I wasn’t holding it against him. However, Howl was still closed, with police tape stretched across the entrances, so I knew Bennie wasn’t here for makeup.

  Bennie wasn’t in costume. Instead, he was wearing normal clothes: dark jeans and a forest-green shirt. He paused in front of me, putting his hands on my shoulders as if to brace me.

  “How are you?” He didn’t give me a chance to answer. “You look tired. Have you been sleeping?”

  “Not really,” I admitted.

  Bennie guided me to a nearby chair. When I protested, he held a finger to his lips. “Why did you open the shop? You should’ve taken some time off.”

  “What would I do instead? Stay in bed?” I asked. “The show must go on, right?”

  No way I was going to stay holed up in my apartment with only the ghost of a murder victim to keep me company, not that I could tell Bennie that. He frowned.

  “Besides,” I countered. “Did you take yesterday off?”

  Howl was a side gig for Bennie, like it was for most of the actors. The rest of the time, he worked as a dispatcher for the police department.

  “I wasn’t the one who found him,” he said.

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I let it hang in the air between us. “Do you want a cup of coffee?”

  “Sure.”

  I brewed the dark roast Bennie preferred in the coffee pot I kept in the back of the shop, handing him the cup and grabbing a second for me. We sat down in the cushioned chairs next to the dressing room, sipping our drinks.

  I broke the silence first. “What do you know about the mysterious owner of Howl?”

  It took him a while to answer. “Other than his name?” Bennie avoided eye contact. “Not much. Craig runs everything at Howl.”

  “Which is?”

  “Which is what?”

  I tried to keep my frustration out of my voice. “His name?”

  “Why are you asking?” His voice was wary.

  “Just curious. Is it a secret?”

  He leaned back in his chair but didn’t answer me.

  I tried again. “You’ve never met the man?”

  “I didn’t say that.” He set his half-empty cup on the small table between us. Two things were clear. One, Bennie knew his name, and two, for whatever reason, he wasn’t about to share it with me.

  That didn’t stop me from trying. “How well do you know him?”

  “Well enough to know he’s not involved, if that’s what you’re asking,” Bennie said. “Why are you digging?”

  “You saw Jack Gates, Bennie. His throat was cut.”

  “Yes, and that’s a tragedy. But it’s a tragedy for the police to solve.”

  I sighed. “I know that.”

  “Have you talked to Emma?” Bennie asked.

  “Yeah. She’s coming over later, so we can bond over pizza and our shared trauma.” I tried to make light of it, but Bennie wasn’t fooled.

  “Listen, it’s normal to be upset, Kali. What you saw, that would traumatize anyone.”

  “You seem okay.”

  He grabbed my hand. “I spend forty hours a week navigating this shit. After a while, you either develop some armor or a drinking problem.”

  I squeezed his hand and smiled. “I’ll be okay.”

  “I know you will.”

  Bennie changed the subject before I could. “Emma mentioned that you were acting weird before you found Gates.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She said you kept seeing someone, and you seemed scared of whoever it was. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t want to worry you.” That was mostly true. Of course, I couldn’t get a close enough look at my stalker to be sure he wasn’t already dead. Dead men, while annoying, didn’t seem to be particularly dangerous to anything except my sanity. “Besides, I’m probably overreacting. He’s just a guy who keeps showing up.”

  Bennie leaned forward, his eyes sharp with interest. “What did he look like?”

  I hesitated, not sure how to describe the man.

  Bennie snapped his fingers and motioned for me to pony up a description. “You know, I might be able to help. I do have connections.” As a dispatcher, those connections might come in handy, if my stalker turned out to be alive. Otherwise, I was on my own.

  I started with the obvious. “Male, around six feet tall, white.”

  “Well, that narrows it down.”

  “No. I mean really white. Almost albino white. And gaunt, like his cheekbones could cut the air, gaunt.”

  Bennie had grown still, all trace of sarcasm gone. “Go on.”

  “He wore a black hat, like a fedora, and a suit that hung off him. His hair, what I could see of it, was white.”

  “He was old?” Bennie asked.

  “No,” I said. “Not that kind of white.”

  “How did he move?”

  It was an odd question, but I answered him. “Unnaturally.”

  He didn’t ask what I meant. “Stay away from him, Kali.”

  “You know him?” I asked, trying to keep the relief that the man was a living, breathing stalker out of my voice.

  Wrangling one ghost was one too many. I was glad I didn’t have to add another to the fray. My relief was short-lived though. If he wasn’t a ghost, then he hadn’t been there for me. Maybe he had come for Jack.

  “He’s not the kind of man you want to know,” Bennie said, making me even more uneasy.

  “Who is he?”

  For a second, I thought Bennie was going to tell me. Instead, he said, “I don’t know. I’ve just seen him hanging around the haunted houses.”

  We both knew he was lying.

  “Promise me you’ll call me if you see him again.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said.

  Bennie leaned in for our usual quick hug. “I mean it. And I’ll check on you next week.”

  Emma showed up at the shop just as Bennie was leaving. I flipped the closed sign around. She stood in the doorway, one foot inside and the other paused on the threshold, as if she couldn’t quite decide on whether to come in or not. I pretended to wipe away a smudge on the window, giving her ample time to change her mind and retreat.

  Bennie didn’t give her the same opportunity. He pulled her into the room, hugging her as if they were old friends, murmuring soothing words like he was comforting a frightened child.

  “I’m fine,” she told him, her voice soft but steady.

  I was glad he was here, a buffer against the awkwardness of it all. He didn’t stay long, however, and soon enough, it was just the two of us in an empty shop.

  “I’m almost done. Just have to close out the till. I’ll be up in a minute. Pizza should be here in ten,” I said, buying myself a few more minutes. “I left cash on the table.”

  She nodded, her shoulders relaxing as she headed outside to the stairwell that led up to my apartment. I took my time counting the money and putting it in the safe. When I was finished, I thought about sweeping or arranging the pins by color, but there were some things procrastination couldn’t fix.

  “Hey,” I said as I walked into the apartment.

  Emma had already kicked her shoes off by the door, hung her coat on the back of a chair, and taken up residence on the couch. Pizza boxes were stacked, unopened, on the coffee table in front of her. I’d ordered enough pizza that we’d have leftovers for a week. Emma had one foot tucked under her and was tapping my behemoth all-in-one remote against the palm of her hand. She looked up as I walked in.

  “The remote isn’t working. Batteries?” And just like that, we were back on familiar ground.

  “Let me check,” I said, rifling through kitchen drawers. “Damn.”

  Emma laughed. “No worries. We’ll just do this old school.” She walked across the living room to push the TV’s on button.

  “What movie did you pick?”

  She waved a tattered VHS case. Hocus Pocus.

  I was likely the only VHS owner in a hundred-mile radius, but that had its perks. What I couldn’t get for free, I could pick up for pennies from secondhand store movie bins. I’d built an impressive collection of 80s movies that way. On the downside, there was always the risk of a twisted tape wrecking the end of a movie.

  When I first moved in, I thought about trading my clunky VHS player for a streaming device, but I couldn’t bring myself to ditch the box of old movies Claire and I had watched growing up. The tapes had been my mother’s, squirreled away in the attic where they gathered dust alongside broken furniture and my grandmother’s antique steamer trunk. Claire and I had smuggled the movies out of the attic, stuffing them in the waistbands of our pants and tucking them under our shirts like contraband. We spent whole weekends on movie marathons, rolling our eyes at the cheesy dialogue in Sixteen Candles and mocking the special effects in Nightmare on Elm Street.

  My mother would shake her head and frown at us, and as soon as she left the room, Claire and I would burst out laughing. Back then, I could laugh so hard my stomach hurt and tears ran down my cheeks. I’d kept the movies, got a can of compressed air, and did my best to blow out twenty years of dust from the VHS player I had shared with my sister since elementary school.

  “Good choice,” I said, grateful for a light-hearted, campy Halloween tale. We made it through a third of the movie and a box and a half of pizza before we talked about anything other than how fabulous Sarah Jessica Parker was back in the day.

  I broke first. “How are you holding up?”

  Emma shifted toward me, her face pinched. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I just keep thinking about that poor man.” She got up and paused the movie. “Do you know who he was?”

  “Jack Gates. All I know is he was a reporter for The Kansas City Star.” I shut off the movie. Hocus Pocus would have to wait for another night.

  Emma was quiet for a minute. When she did speak, her voice was sad. “I’m sorry I left you there alone.” She turned, shifting closer to me. “I guess I freaked out. After I talked to the cops, I just wanted to get out of there.”

  I pulled her in for a hug. “It’s okay, Em. I’m glad Bennie took you home.”

  “Bennie was great. He stayed with me the whole time. I think I would’ve fallen apart without him.”

  It didn’t surprise me that he was as good at his day job as he was at his side gig. As a dispatcher, Bennie was used to dealing with trauma. I was glad he had been the one with Emma. I somehow doubted Craig’s presence would have been quite as comforting.

  Emma pulled back and wiped away the tear sliding down her cheek. She shook her head as if to will the sadness away. “Do you know that even that crazy redhead who took our tickets was nice to me?” She laughed. “She bought me a Coke.”

  “Ruby?” I tried to picture her non-aggressive.

  “I know, right? I think it really got to her too,” Emma said. “She was pretty shook up, which must have been out of character for her, because Bennie seemed surprised.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh yeah.” Emma reached for a tissue to blow her nose. “Her hands were shaking when she was on the phone with her boss.”

  “Her boss?” I asked, confused. “I thought Craig was her boss.”

  “No. I don’t think so. Ruby called whoever she was talking to on the phone boss.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Well, she told the person they had a situation, that a man had been killed in the haunted house. Other than that, she did more listening than talking.”

  “Did she say a name?”

  “Gates, you mean?”

  “No, no. I mean, did she call her boss by name?”

  “All I heard her say was ‘boss.’”

  Emma and I spent the next hour trading notes about the aftermath. Even after hugging her goodbye, I kept thinking about the anonymous owner of Howl.

  I replayed the conversations with Bennie and Emma most of the night, and I kept coming back to two things: Bennie’s reaction to my mention of the guy lurking around and the secrecy with which everyone seemed to guard the name of Howl’s owner. Jack hadn’t made another appearance, so I couldn’t grill him about either. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that those details were important.

  I waited until morning to call the police. The number on the card Woodson had left me turned out to be the general non-emergency police number rather than his direct line. “May I speak with Detective Woodson, please?”

  It took several seconds before the call was transferred, and he picked up the line. “Detective Woodson here.”

  “Hi. This is Kali James. We met Thursday night at Howl. I was the woman who discovered the dead body.” I introduced myself as if Woodson might not recognize my name, despite my starring appearance in a homicide investigation.

  “Of course, Ms. James. I remember you. How can I help you?” he asked.

  “I was just curious if you had made any progress on the case.” I doubted he’d tell me anything, but I took a shot, anyway.

  “It’s early yet, Ms. James.” Woodson sighed. “We gathered a lot of evidence, but it takes a long time for the crime lab to analyze everything.”

  “And interviews?” I asked, well aware that the response would be the standard, police issue “we have no information at this time” line.

  Woodson didn’t disappoint. “We are continuing to interview customers and employees to gather evidence and identify suspects. Is there anything else, anything that you thought of, that might be helpful to us?”

  “That’s why I’m calling. It might be nothing.” I stumbled, even though I’d rehearsed how to say this without sounding crazy. “It’s just that I did see something odd that night. I didn’t think it was connected at the time, but now I’m not so sure.”

  “What did you see, Ms. James?”

  “I saw a man outside the haunted house. He seemed to be loitering around, out of place.” I didn’t mention that I’d first seen him outside my apartment or that he appeared to be following me. “He seemed,” I paused, “off.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not sure how to explain it. He didn’t seem to be there for the haunted house. It’s like he was watching and waiting.” That much was true, even if I did leave out the bit about him watching and waiting for me.

  “For what?” Woodson asked.

  “I’m not sure,” I hedged.

  “All right. I’ll make a note of it. Thank you for calling.”

  “Wait! I also saw him inside the haunted house.”

  “Okay.” Woodson was displaying the kind of patience people offered children when they were humoring them.

  “Look, I really think you should look into this guy.”

  Woodson cleared his throat. “We questioned everyone at the scene, so if he was there, we should have his information.”

  “Yes, but…”

  “If you think of anything else, Ms. James, please give me a call.” He hung up before I could argue.

  Let the police do their job. They were the ones with the resources and connections to solve this murder. They knew what they were doing. But I battled back the sense of déjà vu.

  Stay in your lane, K. It was my brother Drew’s voice I heard in my head, the refrain one I heard often in the months after Claire was killed. Everyone except me, my father included, was content to accept her death as the unfortunate accident it had been ruled, a classic drunk driver hit-and-run. While the police had investigated, they had more high-profile murder cases competing for attention. A hit-and-run didn’t warrant the kind of resources or time it took to find the driver. But I couldn’t let it go.

  In the aftermath of losing Claire, we’d all channeled grief in our own way. My mother fractured, day by day. Three months after we put Claire in the ground, I came home from school to the somber faces of my dad and brother standing in the empty spot where my mother’s car should have been. By then, it hadn’t been much of a surprise.

  Since learning about magnets in fourth grade, I understood what my mother and I were. As a child, I drew her to me, the pull undeniable. And as I grew up, the poles flipped, and no matter how much I reached for her, we couldn’t touch any more. After Claire died, the gulf between us grew, the chasm so wide, it swallowed her whole.

  Dad, for the most part, lost himself in other people’s tragedies. As a homicide detective, he’d always been dedicated to his work, but after losing Claire, it seemed to be the only fuel he had. Our dining room table changed from a gathering place for holiday dinners to a surface to spread out crime scene photos.

  My brother Drew turned his bedroom into a weight room, spending hours pushing his body to the edge of its endurance. Although only a year and a half separated us, the gangly seventeen-year-old who used to tease me about my crushes became a younger, harder version of my dad. One more person to warn me to leave the investigation to the actual police.

  I hadn’t listened then. But I hadn’t found the man who killed her, either. This time, I reminded myself, I wasn’t searching for the person who left my sister broken and dying on the pavement. Jack Gates was a complete stranger. Maybe this time, I should heed the voice rattling around in my head. I could still walk away, leaving the investigation to the people who got paid to do it.

  I had a long day of sewing ahead of me, and keeping the lights on was higher on my list of priorities than hunting down some creep who may or may not have killed Jack Gates. I bypassed my open laptop, resisting the temptation to spend the next hour digging into Gates’ past and headed for the bathroom.

  I opened the shower doors and turned the water on hotter than usual, hoping the heat and steam would unknot the tension I’d been carrying around. I shrugged out of my pajamas, Gates’ penny falling out of my pocket. Despite my best intentions, I kept carrying it around. I dropped it on the counter along with my jewelry and stepped into the steamy shower.