I did a quick check of the library and the rest of the house, not sensing anything out of the ordinary, then locked the front door and headed upstairs to my aunt’s summoning chamber. She had her chamber in her attic since there was no way in the world for her to have a basement where she lived. Basements in Louisiana were pretty damn rare, since the water table was so high. The only reason I was able to have one was because my house was situated on a hill. It was yet one more reason why I knew I would never sell that house.
Fortunately, the staircase to the attic was a real one and not a rickety pull-down ladder, since Tessa occasionally brought the demons she summoned down to her library. In theory, the attic could have been used as an additional bedroom, albeit a small one. I tugged the door open, making a face as a wave of warm air flowed over me. I flicked the air vent to the full open position, then stood in front of the vent for a few minutes as cooler air poured in.
Finally, when the temperature was bearable, I moved to the center of the room, pulling a piece of chalk out of my pocket. I sketched out a storage diagram, then sat back on my heels and channeled as much potency as I could scrape up into it—which wasn’t much. But my idea was to continue to do this throughout the day—little bumps of potency that hopefully wouldn’t wipe me out too much.
My plan for the rest of the day was to alternate between channeling potency, eating Oreos, and watching corny movies. Tessa had a huge number of DVDs, so after I came down from the attic, I settled myself in front of the TV and began to browse her collection. However, I quickly discovered that her taste in movies was similar to her taste in just about everything else—quirky, eccentric, eclectic. The Killing Time. Metropolis. El Topo. The Heroic Trio. The Night of the Hunter. Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter. Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. What the hell was that? I thumbed through, hand abruptly pausing on Barbarians at the Gate. I still hadn’t looked at the video from the gate surveillance at Brian Roth’s subdivision.
I retrieved the DVD from my bag and popped it into Tessa’s player, then settled back with the Oreos and the remote. The screen was split into four sections—views from the main cameras at the entrance and the exit and then views from two lower cameras, designed to record the license plates of cars that came and went. The multiple cameras made viewing the video challenging, but after a few minutes I learned to ignore the license-plate views and focus on only the two main cameras. Good thing I had plenty of sugar in my system.
At the one-dozen-Oreos point, I saw a blue Prius exit the gates. I ran it back and checked the view that showed the license plate. Yep, that was Carol’s; 6:30 p.m. Half an hour later on the video, I saw Brian’s Ford F-150 enter. Well, that eliminated the outside possibility that Carol had killed Brian and then gone off to meet whomever she’d met, and it also helped clinch my theory that Brian hadn’t been the one who killed her at the motel.
While my eyes glazed and my stomach protested the sheer number of Oreos that had been stuffed into it, I dutifully fast-forwarded through the next several hours of video, watching to see if the Prius returned or Brian’s pickup left.
A flash of red caught my attention and I sat up, jamming my thumb down on the pause button. I slowly ran the video back, exhaling in astonishment as a familiar red Mercedes convertible came into view. “What the hell?”
I quickly checked the license plate view, then sighed. False alarm. Not Elena Sharp’s after all.
But I kept the video paused on the view of the license plate. Frowning, I picked up my cell phone and dialed the Beaulac PD dispatcher.
“Detective Gillian here. Can you run a tag for me, please?”
After about a minute, I thanked the dispatcher and hung up. Matching red Mercedes convertibles. It wasn’t Elena’s car. It was her husband’s.
I checked the time on the video: 11:30 p.m. I replayed the section several times, then ran it forward to find the point where the car exited the subdivision: 11:50 p.m.
I sat back, image of the red Mercedes frozen on Tessa’s TV. I felt equally frozen. I’d wanted a connection between Brian Roth and Davis Sharp. Now I had it—but I still had to make sense out of it. Maybe Becky the Cardio Barbie was wrong, maybe it was Brian that Elena had been sleeping with, and not his father. If so, maybe Davis found out that Brian and Elena were sleeping together, and went and killed Brian in revenge. That’s fairly plausible. But that didn’t explain Carol’s death.
I shook my head. I was getting ahead of myself. Just because Davis had been in that subdivision didn’t mean he’d killed Brian. It didn’t even mean he’d gone to Brian’s house. Stick with what you can determine for now, I chided myself.