A Ghoul's Guide to Love and Murder

  Tuesday was four days from now. “How did I miss this?” I muttered.

  “It’s been all over the news,” he said.

  I sighed and went back to sit on my box. “Guess I picked the wrong time to stop watching the news, huh?”

  “So what do we do?” Olivera asked again. She seemed close to panic at the revelation that we’d have to wait for a sunny day to confront the person behind all this.

  “We identify the killer,” I said again. “And once we do that, we figure out how to proceed.”

  Gil pointed to the laptop. “This might help,” he said.

  “How so?” I asked.

  “It’s Sullivan’s computer.”

  I looked around. “This was his office.”

  “Yes,” Olivera confirmed.

  “Can we take the computer?” Gil asked.

  Olivera bit her lip. “I’d feel more comfortable handing that over to one of our techs,” she said. Gilley and I exchanged a look and I decided to be honest with her. “Detective—,” I began.

  She cut me off. “Please call me Chris.”

  “Um . . . okay. Chris. Gilley is actually one of the best computer geeks you’ll ever meet. If this computer has any kind of information relevant to the case, he’ll find it.”

  “It’s the not-relevant-to-the-case information that I worry about,” she said. “Sullivan could have personal information on that computer that I’m certain his family wouldn’t want a stranger digging through.”

  To this, Gilley rolled his eyes. “Oh, please. If I really wanted to uncover personal information on Sullivan, not having access to his computer wouldn’t stop me.”

  Olivera studied him for a minute. “You’re a hacker.”

  Gil flexed his fingers. “One of the best.”

  She sighed. “I’m not just at risk of losing my job here, guys. I’m probably at risk of being arrested for obstruction if I let you take that computer.”

  “We’ll put it back,” I told her.

  She rubbed her forehead, as if she too had a headache. “No,” she said firmly. “Sorry, but it can’t leave the scene. I could have to swear in court that the physical chain of custody remained intact, and I’m not going to lie on the stand. See what you can find out between now and when we’re ready to get out of here.”

  Gil sighed, but he seemed to accept her decision. “Fine,” he said, and then he held up the bottle of Excedrin. He’d noticed her squinty expression and the rubbing of her forehead too. She nodded; he tossed her the bottle, then sat down to start typing on the keyboard.

  “Don’t leave a trace,” I told him. The last thing we needed was for one of the techs at BPD to figure out that we’d been snooping in Sullivan’s computer files.

  Gilley made a face but never took his eyes off the screen. “Gurl, pleez,” he said. “Who do you think you’re dealing with?”

  “Sorry,” I told him. “You know what’s odd?” I said next.

  “Your fashion sense?”

  I glared at Gil. “Funny,” I said flatly. “And no, what’s odd is why the killer thought to take the computer that the other cameras fed to, but not this one.”

  Gil paused in his typing and looked at Olivera, as if she might have the answer. “That’s easy,” she said. “The office was locked.”

  Gil turned to me. “That’s true,” he said. “When I first got to this office, it was totally locked.”

  “I was meaning to ask you how you managed to get it open,” Olivera said.

  Gilley pointed at me. “It was probably someone from her crew.”

  Olivera eyed me quizzically. “What’s he talking about?”

  “The lights that turned on to illuminate our path,” I said. “That was probably one of the spirits that watches over me, and that same spirit likely managed to unlock the door.” I had a very strong sense that Sam had once again come to my rescue, but I didn’t want to go into a lot of detail about who he was, et cetera, for Olivera, who would probably only ask me a bunch of irrelevant questions.

  “One of the spirits that watches over you?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “I’m a medium. I work with a lot of souls who’ve crossed over. Occasionally, one of them does me a solid.”

  “Huh,” Olivera said, like I’d just given her the solution to a complicated math problem. “That’s either wicked cool or wicked creepy.”

  I smiled. “Let’s go with cool, lest we offend them.”

  “Right,” she said, and eyed the ceiling nervously. Then she moved over to Sullivan’s leather recliner and sat down heavily. “Anyway, can we talk about what the hell happened here tonight?”

  “What’s there to talk about?” I said, knowing I needed to be frank with her. “We came to investigate the scene; the killer found out about it and set Oruç’s demon loose to kill us.”

  Gilley shuddered and paused his typing. “Jesus, M.J., did you get a look at that thing in the light of your flare?”

  “I did,” I said. “I got several more looks at it too.”

  “How did you even think of bringing a flare?” Gil asked. “That was kind of genius.”

  I moved another box that seemed to contain books over to rest my feet on it and leaned back against the wall. “Thanks. It was actually Heath who gave me the idea. He got me a roadside safety kit a few weeks before we went on vacation, and when I saw the flares, I thought they’d be a great backup on a bust should our flashlights ever fail.”

  “It was a great idea,” Gil agreed. “I wish I’d thought of it, actually.”

  “We should probably retrieve it before someone finds the flare stub,” I said. Both Olivera and Gilley looked at me like I was crazy. “No way am I opening that door until morning,” Gilley said.

  Olivera stared uneasily at the door too. “You think the demon is still out there?”

  Gilley shrugged. “It could be,” he said. “I mean, all the killer would have to do is leave the dagger out in the hallway and wait for us to come out.”

  “I highly doubt he’d leave the dagger behind,” I said. “Not after all the trouble he went to to get it in the first place.”

  “Do you know that for sure?” Gilley said. “Seriously, M.J., are you willing to bet your life and the life of your baby on it?”

  I yawned. Man, I was tired. And I kept thinking about Heath, alone, at home, but I also had to admit that I didn’t know if the dagger was still at the museum and taking the chance that it had gone along with Sullivan’s murderer wasn’t something I was prepared to do. I went over to the phone on the desk and called Heath’s cell. It rang four times and he finally answered. “M.J.?”

  “Babe, are you okay?” I asked without preamble.

  There was a pause, then, “Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay. Where are you?”

  It was my turn to pause. If Heath hadn’t spied the note yet, then it might be best to go light on the details. The last thing I needed him to do was to come in search of me at the museum. “I’m out, doing a little legwork with Gil and Detective Olivera.”

  “What time is it?” he asked. His words were slightly slurred. The effects of the drugs and the fact that I’d woken him up.

  “It’s early, sweetheart. I just wanted to call and check on you.”

  “That was nice,” he said. “Do you need me to come help you?”

  “No. No, no. We’re wrapping it up here. Why don’t you go back to sleep and I’ll be home before you know it.”

  Heath made a muffled sound of agreement and I crossed my fingers. “Wake me up when you get in, okay?”

  “Promise,” I said. He told me he loved me and clicked off, and I breathed a small sigh of relief. “He’s fine.” I looked up at my companions. Gilley’s fingers were flying over the keyboard. Olivera was reclined in the leather chair, and exhaustion apparently had taken over, because her eyes were closed and her breathing
was deep and rhythmic.

  Gil paused his typing to glance at her; then he reached down to his backpack, fished around for a second, and pulled up a flash drive. With a finger to his lips at me, he inserted the drive into the USB port and began to download the contents of Sullivan’s computer. I smiled and offered him a thumbs-up.

  I then leaned back against the wall and closed my own eyes. I really wanted to sleep, but I didn’t feel like I could just yet. I wanted to figure out what the hell was going on. So far we’d been stalked and attacked and our homes had been broken into. This wasn’t just Oruç and his demon getting revenge. This had taken careful planning by someone living. Someone who had it in for us. But who?

  “Gil?” I said.

  “Yeah?” he replied distractedly. He was very focused on his task of rooting through Sullivan’s computer.

  “The thing with the magnets. Not a lot of people know about how magnets affect a spook.”

  “What’s your point?” he asked.

  “My point is, someone went to a lot of trouble to ensure that, once they set the demon free, it could cause maximum harm. Here. At the museum.”

  Gil paused to look at me. “Whoa,” he said. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

  “I’m saying that I think whoever our thief was knew enough about our ghostbusting techniques to neutralize any attempt we might have made to stop Oruç’s demon from appearing. I’m also saying that I think the killer had something big planned for opening day at the exhibit, but when Heath and I showed up with our gear from the closet in my office—the gear that was still fully magnetized—we might’ve thwarted that plan.”

  Gilley sat with that for a moment. “I’ll bet you’re right, M.J.,” he said.

  “And you know what else keeps going around in my head?” I asked him.

  “What?”

  “It’s to your earlier point about the fact that not a lot of people know about the effect magnets have on a spook. Sure, we’ve highlighted that in a show or two, but the dagger isn’t just a haunted relic—it’s a portal, Gil. A gateway, and one of the things that’s intriguing about the theft of the dagger is that the body count isn’t higher.”

  “One dead isn’t enough for you?” Gil said drolly.

  I ignored that and went on with making my point. “Oruç hated women. He lusted for killing them, and yet, the only person dead is a man, who wasn’t even killed with the dagger. That suggests to me that someone knows how to control the portal and is opening and closing the gateway at will.”

  Gil’s jaw dropped. “Ohmigod,” he said. “You’re right!”

  “Only someone with a hell of a lot of experience would know how to keep Oruç under wraps like that. Someone’s clearly keeping Oruç under tight control but allowing the demon to run free, and that could only be done by someone with hands-on experience. Handling demons is no joke, you’d be safer trying to handle a rabid lion, so whoever did this is orchestrating things on a level of a fellow ghostbuster. Somebody who knows a lot about electromagnetic frequencies and how they can affect, specifically, a portal, and also, how to handle a demon well enough to put the genie back in the bottle when necessary.”

  Gilley studied me in a way that suggested he hadn’t really thought of all that. “Shit,” he swore. “You think it’s one of our competitors?”

  “Who else could it be?”

  Gil wiped his face with his hand. “That’s certainly one way to narrow the pool of suspects,” he said. “Okay, let me try searching Sullivan’s computer for any sign of someone in our industry. Maybe there’ll be an e-mail or a reference to a name I recognize.”

  And then that thing that’d been bugging me since this all began surfaced in my mind again and I said, “Gil, can you look for a connection between Sullivan and that producer, Bradley Rosenberg?”

  Gil’s fingers paused on the keyboard. “Why?”

  “Because I just don’t trust this whole setup,” I said. “I mean, we’ve been advertising the fact that we’d have an exhibit here at the museum for a couple of months now, and we all spoke about what we’d contribute to it on the fan site, but then all of the sudden, just when Gopher, me, and Heath are out of the country and unreachable, you get a phone call from some mysterious producer we’ve never heard of, telling you that Gopher—someone we trust—supposedly told him about Oruç’s dagger and how it’d be the perfect thing to add to the exhibit. This Rosenberg guy never tried to call me or Heath about it . . . just you. And he offered you a lot of money, right?”

  “Twenty thousand,” Gilley said meekly.

  I whistled. “Twenty grand to pony up an old dagger? I mean, when you really think about it, it’s absurd, right? Bradley represents an industry literally built on props, but suddenly he’s got to have you bring the real thing here to the museum? And,” I added, “as of today, you haven’t received said check, correct?”

  “He said it was in the mail,” Gil said, even more meekly.

  “Of course it is,” I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “And even if it were, Gil, think about it; you haven’t heard back from good ol’ Bradley after leaving him a voice mail telling him that the dagger he paid twenty thousand dollars for has just been stolen. Don’t you think that’s a little suspicious?”

  “But, M.J.,” he protested, “like I told you, I’ve called his business line. Several times. I’ve spoken to his assistant. He’s legitimately from the studio!”

  I crossed my arms, tapping my finger to my biceps. “Call the office number he gave you now,” I said. “I’d like to hear his legitimate assistant’s voice mail.”

  Gil glared at me and lifted his phone from his backpack. After several attempts to turn it on, he muttered in irritation, dug again through his backpack, and came up with a charger. Plugging his phone in, he waited a moment for it to charge enough so he could access his contacts and, with a triumphant tap, placed the call and turned on the speaker function.

  It rang twice before the error message broadcast through the phone. “The number you have reached has been disconnected or is no longer in service. Please check the number and try again.”

  Gilley made a barely audible squeaky noise, and he stared unblinking at his phone.

  “Yep,” I said. “That’s what I thought.”

  But Gil wasn’t giving up. “It’s gotta be a mistake,” he said, thumbing through his contacts again. “I’m calling Bradley’s cell again.” He left the speaker function on when he made that call too, and sure enough, another error message came on suggesting that the voice mailbox for the person he was trying to call was full.

  Gilley’s eyes misted with tears. “No,” he whispered.

  “Sorry, Gil. You were set up,” I said. I had very little satisfaction in the revelation. I hated that he’d been duped, and hated even more that the end result was that one man had already died, and the dagger was now in the possession of some lunatic willing to commit murder just to get noticed.

  “Oh, God, M.J.! What’ve I done?!” Gilley moaned.

  “What’s going on?” Olivera asked groggily. We’d woken her up.

  “Nothing, Chris. We’re just putting pieces together.”

  “Wanna fill me in?” she asked.

  I took a few minutes to do that and she eyed poor Gilley with a measure of sympathy. “I see smart people get played all the time,” she said. “Don’t take it so hard.”

  “I have to take it hard,” Gilley said miserably. “Because of me, the dagger is loose and some asshole is opening up the gateway at will for every spook we’ve ever sent to the lower realms to have another crack at us. M.J., what if the demon from Heath’s pueblo in Santa Fe comes after us? Or the one from Ireland? Or”—he gulped before he said the next name—“the Sandman. I mean, what if they all come after us at once? No way can we survive that!”

  I got up and went over to lay a gentle hand on Gil’s should
er. “You’re right,” I said to him—there was no sense lying. “But we’re not gonna let that happen, Gil. We’re gonna put a stop to this before it gets that far. We’ll track down the sons of a bitches responsible for this mess, and take back that dagger. You have my word on that.”

  “But how?” he said pitifully. “I mean, we’ve got nothing to go on! Bradley could’ve been anybody, and his admin also could’ve been anyone.”

  “True, but if we start putting together enough of what we do know, maybe the trail will lead back to one or both of them.” I then eyed Sullivan’s computer pointedly.

  Gil followed my gaze and squared his shoulders. “Got it,” he said. “Gimme a few hours.”

  Chapter 13

  Only half an hour into his hacking, Gilley had gained access to Sullivan’s bank account. “Why people do their personal banking on a work computer is beyond me,” he said. “Okay, here we go. Five thousand dollars was wired into his account the day after Bradley got me to agree to display the dagger.”

  “Does it show the source?”

  “Someone named Todd Tolliver.”

  “That sounds like a made-up name,” I said. “And five grand doesn’t sound like a big enough bribe to let in someone looking to sabotage an exhibit at the risk of losing his job.”

  “It was probably only the down payment,” Olivera said, making sure to frown at the fact that Gilley was rooting around in Sullivan’s bank accounts. “A show of good faith. He was likely promised that he’d get the rest after the dagger had been stolen.”

  “Gil and I were talking while you were sleeping, Chris, and we think that the dagger being stolen was only part of it. We think that whoever set all this up was planning something big at the exhibit’s opening day, but then Heath and I showed up with gear that had been at our office and was still fully magnetized, and we thwarted his plans. I believe that this guy then came back to get the dagger after hours, not knowing that Sullivan was here in his office working, and when he tripped the alarm, Sullivan surprised him, and maybe he and the killer got into it, which is how Sullivan ended up dead.”