“I’m fine. How’s it going with you?”
“I just found the book taken from the library. It was in Gary White’s apartment,” he said.
“So…Gary White signed himself in as Bel Arcowley?”
“So it seems.”
“But he’s dead,” Kelsey said.
“He had to have been acting for someone,” Liam said.
“Who?”
“I don’t know. But I know where he was going when he left the library. To work for Jonas. Kelsey, don’t let anyone in. If anyone comes over, don’t answer the door. Not until I’m with you.”
“Liam—”
“I may be paranoid, but I’m a cop, and better safe, right?”
“Okay,” she said softly.
“What are you doing?”
“Well, I was going through all the religious artifacts. I found a secret drawer in the sarcophagus. It made me think. I’m tapping around in his office, trying to see if I can find another hiding place.”
“Keep in touch, all right?”
“Of course,” she said.
“Call me if—anything,” he said.
“I promise.”
“Kelsey?”
“Yes?”
“Never mind, we’ll talk later,” he said.
They hung up.
She began looking around Cutter’s desk. Her phone rang again, and she answered it, almost dropping it as she did so, she was so certain she would find something. “Hello, Kelsey.”
She recognized the voice instantly. She started to close the phone, but she heard laughter.
“Don’t hang up on me so quickly, Kelsey. I just want you to know… No, you don’t have to do anything. You don’t ever have to do anything you don’t want to do. Except die.”
Liam walked into the station and straight over to Ricky Long, who was working with the telephone number that the caller had used to threaten Kelsey.
“Sorry, Lieutenant. It’s a prepaid phone, no contract necessary, sold all over, and the purchaser probably paid cash.”
“Pretty much what I expected.”
“But we’re trying to trace it down to the most likely area through the satellites,” Ricky told him hopefully.
“How close can they narrow it?”
“Down to a block, possibly, and if it lets out a signal again, it can be pinpointed more accurately,” Ricky assured him.
“Great. Keep me posted.”
He headed over to the desk where Dave Aspen, the sketch artist, was working with his sketch scanned into the computer.
“Well?
“Lieutenant,” Dave said, looking up. “What timing. I’ve gone ahead and done a slide show with various different scenarios of facial hair and even nose putty.”
“That sounds great. Let me see.”
He pulled up one of the rolling chairs to sit next to Dave while he hit a computer key. “Okay, here’s a cleaned-up version of what I drew yesterday from the clerk’s description. Next, without the beard and the mustache. Now, the nose seemed a little too long and pointed, so I played with it. Oh, wait, this is the one with the eyebrows thinned. Now here’s the one with the thinned brows, facial hair gone, best representation of the lips and mouth I can manage, and—”
He broke off; Liam was standing.
He should have known!
Just as he did so, Ricky came rushing over to him. “Lieutenant!”
“What, Ricky, what?”
“He called her again. The phone is on the Merlin estate. He might be calling from within the house.”
She’d had it. Completely had it. She was on to something, and this idiot was calling her, trying to scare her out of the house.
“Back off, ass,” she said and snapped the phone closed.
“What was that?”
“A jerk!” she said angrily. “I’ll fool around in here in a minute again. I don’t know what I’m looking for. And I’m feeling… I don’t know. Like I need to sit down, like I’m going to pass out.”
“Then you need to sit,” Bartholomew said. “Take a break.”
“No, no, I can’t. I think I have to keep going. Okay, I tried the mummy. The chalices, the runes…Odin! Time for the voodoo altar.”
She walked back out to the living room and stared at the altar. There were numerous saints, little statues, big statues. There were offerings to the saints on the black velvet altar cover. There were Mardi Gras beads spread over it in a series of colors. A child had offered up a princess doll that was almost life-size. It had been given to the Virgin Mary, who looked down at her benignly, her hands spread in an offer of tenderness and peace.
There was a pounding on the front door. She walked to it and looked through the peephole.
Jonas was out there. Liam had told her not to let anyone in. And she was starting to feel like hell, so weak and disoriented.
He was waving at her wildly, saying something, but she couldn’t hear him.
She shouted at him. “I’m sick, Jonas! Go away.”
“Watch yourself, Kelsey,” Bartholomew said. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I don’t know. I’m fine. I must have eaten something…bad.”
She stumbled back to the voodoo altar.