Tales of Aradia The Last Witch Volume 1

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “I am frightened, Xan,” Dax stated. He and his brother were in their somewhat ironic ‘living room.’ He was standing near a window while Xan lounged on the couch reading a Maxim.

  Xan glanced up at his brother scornfully. “You could at least make an effort, you know. At being a man. Even if that’s where you’re going, being afraid, you don’t need to lead right out with it.”

  Dax rolled his eyes and said, “What I mean is I am afraid that my approach with Aradia is not working out.”

  Xan raised an eyebrow.

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “It just isn't, Xan. I don't want to do this anymore.”

  Xan slammed the magazine down and stood up to face Dax.

  “You are afraid to get too close to her,” stated Xan.

  Dax did not reply, which was all the confirmation Xan needed. He raised an eyebrow, but before he could say anything else, Dax had already gone from the room.

  For the most part, Dax’s bedroom looked like any other guy's bedroom. His simply boasted a few modifications. His room’s single window was covered with thick boards of black wood. There were no mirrors at all. Oh, and instead of a bed, there lay a large black coffin with red velvet cushions.

  Dax threw himself into his coffin and rolled onto his back. He reached over and grabbed his headphones from his bedside table. After jamming them on, flicking on their noise cancellation, and pumping up the volume, Dax folded his hands behind his head and closed his eyes.

  Aradia’s face haunted him. He imagined her smiling at him, throwing her head back in laughter, and flipping her long red hair behind her head when someone called her name. He thought about her green eyes and how they sparkled in any light, her thin rosy lips moving as quick as lightning, and her pale skin shimmering in the sun. He could almost hear her shrill voice cracking sometimes-clever jokes, inevitably followed by either groans or roars of laughter. As much as he didn't want it to, a happy grin crept onto his face as he pictured her slender body, her quirky, Pollyanna-like personality, and the small little smiles she threw so freely at her friends.

  He pulled his right arm from behind his head and grabbed a fistful of dirt that lay on the bottom of his coffin. It was taken from the soil of his mortal grave, as was the coffin itself. He held the precious dirt in his fist and squeezed the contents.

  As he listened to the crunching sound of the dirt he reminisced onto the times he had spent with Aradia. They had gone to their favorite coffee shop where they’d sat and talked for hours. They had taken long strolls on the beach together. Even though it was already October, the cold didn’t bother him, and she never seemed to notice. They’d discussed everything from Wall Street to their preferred shampoo.

  Dax had to admit that Aradia was not like any other woman he had ever met. She was so honest, non-judgmental, caring, considerate, perceptive, insightful, and sweet. Even with the secrets between them, they’d formed a bond. The more time he spent with her the stronger his feelings for her grew. He did not know if he was falling in love with her. He didn’t think he’d ever truly fallen in love with anyone. Whatever it was he was feeling for Aradia, he knew that if he kept seeing her, the emotion was bound to get deeper.

  Moreover, he thought to himself, it is bound to make things difficult.

  “This Dereck character seems suspicious,” Aradia insisted, trying to get her dad to talk to her. Ever since the crime scene, he’d been extra reluctant to talk about the case with her.

  “Sure. He is,” her father finally replied. “He was an early person of interest. The police didn’t find anything on him, though, and neither did the DA’s office.”

  “What about money?” she asked. “That’s got to be like, one of the top five reasons people have ever been killed.”

  He nodded agreement. “It’s a good hunch, Rai. But there’s not a shred of evidence to back it up.” He briefly considered his options. “Ah, to hell with it. Come here.”

  She jumped onto the couch next to him. He popped open his laptop as he explained, “I could probably lose my job for showing you this, so please keep it between us?”

  “Cross my heart,” she replied.

  “Hmph,” he said. He pulled up an Excel spreadsheet. “Look, here, and here,” he said, jabbing his finger at the screen.

  “Uhh,” Aradia replied, boggled by the columns of densely laid information. “I’m not really sure what you’re showing me. Maybe you shouldn’t risk your job for this after all.”

  “This is a document we found on Herr Hitzig’s office computer.”

  “Ooh!” she exclaimed. “Did you subpoena it?”

  He shook his head. “Nah, didn’t have to. So look here. It basically outlines several aspects of Dereck’s business relationship to the deceased, Mr. Stanley. Does anything jump out at you?”

  She stared. She could probably figure it out if she had some time, but she didn’t feel like sifting through the details to find what her father was talking about. “Not really my strong suit, dad. I view the past, you decipher spreadsheets.”

  “Fair enough. Dereck had an incredibly favorable agreement with Stanley. Either he is a brilliant negotiator, or Stanley was very desperate. Or both. Either way, here’s how it worked. If the store did well, Dereck got a pretty sizable share of the profits. If it went under, Dereck would take the lion’s share of the sale price.”

  “Sale price?” Aradia asked. “If the store’s not profitable, how much would it really go for?”

  “The store’s irrelevant,” her father explained. “The land is what’s valuable. My guess is Dereck got involved as an investor simply to make off like a bandit when the shop ultimately failed.”

  “And bandits go to jail,” Aradia prodded.

  “Only like a bandit, not just like one,” Ross countered. “But look. The store didn’t fail. At least, not at the point that Mr. Stanley was killed. Stanley’s next of kin, the Baltimore cousins I mentioned, inherited it. The agreement Dereck had with Stanley is iffy on what happens now.”

  “So maybe he’s trying to take the whole thing? You know, fight the cousins for control, since he was a business partner and they’re estranged distant relatives.”

  “I trust your instincts,” Ross said. “Tomorrow in the office I’ll take another look over everything we have on Dereck. But there’s nothing here in the financials. He’s not challenging the cousins at all. They made him an offer, a reasonable and fair one, to buy out his stake in the store, and he’s already accepted it.”

  Aradia’s shoulders sank in defeat. She was stubborn, but she had to admit the case against Dereck was a weak one.

  Ross concluded, “Basically, yeah, Dereck Caradoc’s a shady dude, and not one I’d ever get involved with, but there’s nothing financial pointing at him as the murderer.”

  Aradia’s next step in identifying the killer was interviewing Kaiser. That was a harder task than she’d thought at first. His number was unlisted, he wasn’t enrolled at Salem High, and even Roy had proven thoroughly unhelpful when she’d asked him for help finding Kaiser.

  “There are a lot of werewolves, Aradia,” he’d replied a bit antagonistically. “Just because we distantly share some genetics doesn’t mean we all hang out together on weekends.”

  She was disheartened. Dig deeper, Rai, she reminded herself. That was how she wound up at the Salem Police Department on a Saturday afternoon holding an Edible Arrangement.

  For all its fame, or infamy as it were, Salem was a small town, and its courthouse and police department were adjoined into a single structure. As such, Aradia had had ample exposure to the station in her punishment of tidying her father’s office and brewing his coffee. She hadn’t actually been into the police side of the building, though, since her experience with Roy and Scruffy.

  “Knock, knock,” she said as she strolled through the front door.

  “Who’s there?” Officer Ortega replied. He was visibly surprised when he saw who it was. “Ms. Preston. W
hat brings you to our humble half of the building?”

  “Well, Officer Ortega, I have been feeling a little guilty. You and your partner did me a favor driving me home that night, and not arresting me.” She lowered her voice for the last bit. Ortega winced, but other than that let the point pass. She held out the bouquet of fruit. “I just wanted to thank you guys.”

  “Well, that’s really sweet of you. Honestly I’m not sure how appropriate it is for me to accept a gift from you, though, especially given who your father is.”

  She’d anticipated that. From everything she’d seen, he was pretty by-the-book. “That’s okay,” she said. “I won’t give it to you.”

  “Oh?”

  “No. I would, however, like to make a charitable donation to the Salem Police Department in the amount of one Edible Arrangement.” She set the bundle down on his desk. “You and Goat Chin can eat as much or as little as you like.”

  Ortega did his best to stifle his surprised guffaw, but all he ended up doing was snorting while he laughed.

  “Well, thank you. On behalf of the station.”

  “No problem,” she replied while she plopped herself down in the chair opposite him.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, seeing concern on her face.

  “Well, I have a friend. More of an acquaintance, really. I don’t know him that well, but he’s going through a tough time.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Ortega replied.

  “I wouldn’t be, if I were you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I’d be sorry he’s going through some stuff. But I wouldn’t be sorry to hear it. You’re only hearing it because he has somebody who cares about him.”

  He nodded. “Well said. I’m sorry he’s having a hard time, but I’m glad he has a friend looking out for him.”

  “Acquaintance,” she corrected.

  “Acquaintance, then. Is there, ah, anything I can do to help?”

  “Well, since you ask,” she replied, “I could use some assistance. I need to get in touch with him. I need to talk to him. I just don’t really know where to find him. I found out he goes to SCCS, but he hasn’t been going to class. I don’t know where he lives. Basically, I can’t help him if I can’t find him.”

  “I sympathize with your situation, Ms. Preston, but if you’re asking me to use my position to divulge personal information about another citizen, that would be highly inappropriate.”

  “Not at all,” she replied.

  “Oh,” Ortega replied, surprised. “What can I do for you, then?”

  “I would like to know where drug deals go down. Hypothetically.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I’m leveling with you. I know you can’t give me his personal information. But you can give me generalities that apply to everyone. He’s wrapped up in some stuff. Gangs and drugs. That was easy to find out. The hard part is where I can find him.”

  “I’m not sure I feel comfortable assisting in this,” he replied.

  “Look, if I came here and lied to you and said I was doing a school project or writing an article for the Broomstick, you’d have told me what I’m looking for, right?”

  He didn’t reply, but she suspected she knew the answer.

  “Well, I was honest. Are you really going to punish me for honesty? Because that seems very un-policey.”

  He sighed. “Look, I’m not going to direct you to a drug deal or anything like that. But during the day try the Willows.”

  “The park?”

  “The arcade is closed for the winter. Some of the more unsavory sorts frequent it during the winter months. It’s a convenient location, I suppose, out of the way. Just don’t go after dark.”

  After seeing Roy’s dark side, I might follow that advice.

  She nodded. “Thanks, Officer.”

  “Don’t mention it. Oh, and let your folks know they can claim the donation as a deductible on their taxes.”

  Aradia sat on an iridescent unicorn hobby horse at the Willows historic 1866 carousel, waiting. She’d been there well over an hour already, and hadn’t seen a soul. In between wondering whether Ortega had led her completely astray and what she would say if Kaiser did turn up, she considered the bizarre string of fate which had led her there.

  Before turning to Ortega in her Hail Mary attempt at information, Aradia had approached her father. He’d been distinctly unhelpful. “Aradia, I appreciate your gusto for solving this murder,” he’d said, “but even if I wanted to urge you on this path, I couldn’t. I don’t have anything on the Hitzigs beyond what you already know.”

  He’d been a little deceptive when he’d said that. He had a phone number, which eventually she weaseled out of him. Neither Kaiser nor anyone else answered when she called it repeatedly, though.

  Next she’d tried the second murder scene, also against her father’s wishes. He’d discouraged the idea, especially after her forty-eight hour cat nap. She made it clear she would go there and try her memory power with or without his accompaniment, though. He reasoned it was safer if he were there.

  She hadn’t sensed a thing, though. She wasn’t surprised. It was a place of business, not a home. There was less familiar essence.

  So she tried the next most reasonable option of which she could think, and ended up alone at a public park on a Sunday afternoon eating salt water taffy on a unicorn.

  “Maybe I need to go back to the drawing board,” she muttered as she got off her steed to take a walk.

  She had patrolled the area several times already. “One more look around, then I’m outta here.”

  She was almost shocked when she found the werewolf in question. He was sitting on a bench on the pier smoking a cigarette, looking just as gloomy and angry and miserable as he had been the night he confronted Dax and Aradia. He had smelled her long before she noticed him, but didn’t particularly care. As she approached, she noticed his nose twitching like that of a hound on the scent of a rabbit. I swear, I will just never get used to the whole sniffing thing. I’m so glad I don’t do that.

  He didn’t turn, but he scowled something fierce, and she hung back, afraid to approach him. After a while of this silent standoff, he just shrugged and asked, “What do you want?”

  Aradia breathed deeply and summoned all the courage she could muster. Twisting his arm had been one thing. Getting him to open up emotionally would be quite another. She walked straight up to the werewolf.

  “To find your father's murderer,” Aradia answered him bluntly.

  “It's none of your business.”

  “The police aren’t going to find him,” she said. “They’re thinking like… well, like humans. I might be able to, though.”

  He didn’t respond.

  “So by not helping me, you’re saying you’re okay with your father’s murderer walking around freely?”

  She snatched the cigarette from his lips and threw it over the handrail to the waves below. “Look, Kaiser, I know you didn’t ask me to do this, but that doesn’t matter now. I’m going to find your father’s killer sooner or later whether you help me or not.”

  “Then I guess you don’t need me so much.”

  “I do need you,” she said. “I need you so we can find the murderer sooner rather than later. Sooner, before they kill again, before they put somebody else through what you’re going through now.”

  He gave no response.

  New angle, Rai.

  “When this is all over,” she said, “and you’re looking back, how do you want the story to have played out? Do you want to remember how you helped avenge your dad, or how you sat by and did nothing while a stranger did what you should have been doing?”

  “I…” he began. She saw tears forming at the corners of his eyes.

  She lowered her voice and removed the confrontation from her tone. “You are going to help me, Kaiser. Do you understand?"

  The werewolf was again struck dumb. But this time he nodded.

  “Besides, I could alway
s just beat the information I need out of you,” she said. “Wouldn’t be the first time I beat you up.”

  He chuckled dryly. “Yeah. That didn’t look so good for me in front of the other guys. It gives them ideas, you know. About my leadership abilities.”

  “I’m sure you’re a fine leader.”

  “You took me by surprise. You wouldn’t get away with that again.”

  “Sure I wouldn’t.”

  He stood up and used his greater size to tower over her. He said, "You think you can take me?"

  "How’s your shoulder feel?" Aradia snapped.

  She fixed him with the most vicious and intimidating look she had, folding her arms across her chest, and looking at him straight in the eyes. At first he just looked amused. After a few seconds, though, he remembered where he was and why he knew this girl, and felt his knees buckle. He sat again on the bench and hunched.

  “Okay. What do you want to know?” he asked Aradia, who replied with just a single word.

  “Everything.”