I ground my teeth together. “Office Fitzgerald, does the Chief know you’re texting a suspect and making repeat house calls without—.”
“They know about the juice bar, Miss Jones.” Officer Fitzgerald’s voice was softer than I’d heard it before. Almost kind. I leaned my weight against the doorframe and dragged air in through my teeth. “Look, I know it probably doesn’t seem like this, but I’m on your side, Price. Just let me in. I’m alone and waiting I’m at the back door.”
I killed the call and ran down the back stairs, gesturing for the men to stay in my bedroom and ignoring their shouts for information. True to his word, Officer Fitzgerald was waiting in the alley. I opened the door to let him into the apartment, but he gestured toward the thrift store instead. He closed the door softly behind us and I made for the velvet chair, but he called me back. “It’s better if we stay right here, Miss Jones. We can’t be seen from this angle.”
“Okay,” I said. I walked back slowly, not certain I wanted to be alone with the cop in a place I couldn’t be seen by anyone else. I stopped several feet away from him. “Why are you here, Officer?”
Officer Fitzgerald crossed his arms over his broad chest. “I’ve been a cop for a very long time, Miss Jones. I started my career in Portland and I gave twenty years hard service there; I’ve always prided myself on being a damn good cop. But a few years ago, in Portland, I came up against a number of cases… Well, let’s just say the cases were solved, but maybe I felt we didn’t put the right people behind bars. Maybe there were powerful people pulling strings from high up.” He paused and looked me straight in the eye. “Maybe they were trying to conceal the fact that there supernatural elements at play.”
I drew in a breath, choking on my own spit and collapsing into a fit of coughing. “I’m sorry, a supernatural element?” My eyes burned as I blinked away tears of shock. If I’d been expecting the portly officer to drop a bomb on me, it certainly wasn’t that one.
Officer Fitzgerald’s cheeks colored slightly. “Look, Miss Jones, I know how crazy that sounds, and I don’t expect you to believe me, but I need you to know that these people, the ones evading the law and bending the police force to their will, they’ll do whatever it takes to pin the blame on somebody else. Anybody else.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a thick wad of paper, folded in half, and handed it to me. I opened it and glanced at the first page before folding it over again. I didn’t need to read the words, I’d read the file a thousand times before.
The officer nodded to me as he reached for the door, turning back before he pulled it open. “I’m not saying you had anything to do with Agatha Bentley’s murder, Miss Jones, all I’m telling you is that somebody made sure that file landed on my desk this morning. Somebody who very much wants me to know about your money problems and the skeletons in your closet.”
I nodded, and he stared around the thrift shop. “Agatha Bentley died in this room, Miss Jones, and it was either somebody Mrs. Bentley knew so she didn’t put up a struggle, or somebody who’s able to use some serious voodoo to make it look that way. Somebody damn dangerous, so if you have anything you need to get in order before my superiors hand down the order to bring you in for questioning; any alibi you need to be corroborated, any people you can call, now’s the time to do it.”
I was still standing inside the thrift store when the back door banged shut and the three guys eased themselves into the space around me, waiting patiently for me to speak. I held the wad of paper out woodenly and let them take it from me. Even my voice was tired. “I think things might be even worse than we thought.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“You did what?” Pussy’s voice was raised higher than usual, his expression unreadable.
“You don’t understand,” I said slowly, letting out a deep breath. “It wasn’t my fault, it was my dickhead ex-boyfriend. He had offered to set up my insurance, because he had done it already for his own business. He promised he had it set up two years before, so after the fire burned down my business and I put my claim in, well…”
Tom rubbed his eyes with his hands, letting out a disgruntled breath. “Let me get this straight.” His body was unnaturally still. “Your ex set up your insurance policy in both your names and the next week your business burned down and you made an insurance claim against it. A business that hadn’t turned a profit in the entire time it had been open. Is that right?”
I swallowed hard and nodded. The sinking feeling in my gut deepened. “Yes, but I had no idea Gerard had only just set up the insurance or that he’d requested a waiver on the waiting period before a claim could be made. I had believed it had been set up for years. I know how bad this looks, but I swear to God, I had no idea.”
“No shit, this looks bad.” Pussy dragged his fingers through his hair. “You buy insurance, and the next week your failing business burns to the ground and you set up a claim? Jesus, Price.”
Finn grimaced. “And now Agatha leaves everything to you randomly, you show up a couple of weeks later, and she dies.” He dropped into a crouch against the wall. “Shit, Price. That looks like a pretty bad coincidence.”
“Did they prove it was arson?” Tom’s low tone was as heavy as thunder.
I shook my head. “It wasn’t arson, I swear to you, I would never do a thing like that. I loved that stupid juice bar, even if it never made me a dime. And I didn’t even get to keep the stupid money from the claim, I gave it all to Gerard to cover the money he’d poured into the place before it went bust.” I stared at my feet. “I barely had enough money to cover my bus fare to Salem. Who the hell is going to believe I wasn’t desperate enough to get rid of Agatha?”
Tom grabbed the paper from Finn’s hands and flicked to the last page. “Not you, Price.” He stabbed a finger at Gerard’s signature. “Him. Did he burn your business down? He’s the one who got the money, he’s the one whose name is on every damn piece of paper.” I closed my eyes against his question, the same one that haunted me every night since the fire department had called my phone. But I couldn’t answer it, because if I did, if I admitted he’d done something so vicious, I’d have to admit to myself that I’d wasted ten years of my life on a man who didn’t give a shit about me. And I wasn’t sure that was a truth I could come back from.
Finn crossed the room and grabbed Tom’s shoulder, shooting him a warning look. “Let it go, man. It’s not the time.” He turned to me and cupped my face in his large hands. “Price, what else did Officer Fitzgerald say? Why did he give you this? Why not just take you in for questioning?”
I stared into his green eyes, my calm in the storm. “He said he was on my side. That he didn’t believe I was guilty but somebody higher up was making it impossible to ignore me as a suspect.” I frowned, remembering his bizarre story. “He sounded pretty crazy; he seemed to think he’d been involved in other cases where the wrong person was convicted just to hide some supernatural element.” Pussy’s head jerked up and Finn stared at Tom over my head. “What?” I looked around at the three men. “He’s just a crackpot.”
Pussy took a step forward. “Says the woman who lives with a witch and her three familiars.”