Vieux Carré Voodoo (18 page)

His face turned red. “I told you, I did not kill Levi,” he
said in a controlled voice, but he was gripping the counter so hard his knuckles
turned white. He took a deep breath. “What would I gain by killing Levi,
anyway?”

“Look, I’m sorry, but you have to admit I have to wonder.” I
glanced over at the French doors. “
You
didn’t even try to talk Millie
and Velma into calling the police.
You
volunteered to stand guard last
night. And this morning, his body lands on my balcony.” I thought for a moment.
He wouldn’t have had time to throw the body off the roof and then get back down
to the courtyard. I’d gone to check on him moments after finding the body.

But all that meant was he wasn’t the one who’d thrown the
body off the roof.

And Levi had been dead for hours.

“Okay.” I took a deep breath. “You have no idea who this guy
really was?”

“All I know is whoever this guy really was, it wasn’t Levi
Gretsch.” Now he folded his arms and gave me a look I didn’t much care for. “I
don’t think it’s a good idea to tell Venus and Blaine about the Eye of Kali.”

“Now you’re asking me to lie to the police?” I hissed. “The
problem with lies, Colin, is that once you’re caught your credibility is
completely destroyed. And why did she call you
agent
?”

He smiled at me. “I’m working for your government,
Scotty—like I was when I was trying to protect your uncles.”

I shook my head. “That doesn’t make any sense to me. You
work for Angela Blackledge.”

“I’ve told you, sometimes we’re hired by governments who
need to keep a certain distance from the delicate matters we work on for them.”
He shrugged. “I can’t tell you any more than that.”

“Of course not,” I said sourly, pouring us both a cup of
coffee. Out of habit, I added Sweet’n Low and creamer to his, stirred it, and
handed it to him, like I always used to do. As soon as he took it from me, I
realized what I’d done and my face burned.

He was grinning at me as he sipped his coffee. “You
remember
how I take my coffee?” He put the cup down on the counter. He leaned
forward onto his elbows, every muscle in his arm contracting.

“I remember a lot of things that don’t matter,” I replied
evenly, sipping my own coffee. “But how can we keep all this stuff from them,
Colin? It’s called
obstruction of justice,
and it’s a crime—even if you
are working for the government.” I hopped up and sat on the counter. “Uranium,
international conspiracy, and espionage—Venus will love hearing about it, I’m
sure.” But when I said it out loud, it sounded pretty absurd. In spite of
myself, I started laughing.

Why
does this stuff happen to me?

“Scotty, this isn’t funny.” Colin’s smile faded into a
concerned frown. “The stakes are high. If the wrong people get their hands on
the Eye—”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. Armageddon. Angela was pretty clear
on the phone.” I refilled my coffee cup. “I don’t see how we can keep this from
them. But it does sound ridiculous, if you think about it.” But on the other
hand, so did identical Russian triplets—and Venus and Blaine had worked that
case, too. I felt really tired. The lack of sleep was starting to catch up to
me. I downed the coffee and poured myself another cup. “You didn’t see or hear
anything weird from the roof? He was obviously killed up there—no one could drag
a body up that ladder.” Just thinking about trying it made me queasy. “And
someone had to drop it off the roof to my balcony.”

“It dropped from the roof?”

“Well, how did you think it got there? Magic?” I shook my
head. “You didn’t hear the crash when it landed? The whole building shook. I
went and looked through the curtains—saw him lying there, and called Venus, and
waved you to come up here.” I scratched my nose. “There are only two ways it
could have gotten there. Either it was heaved up there from the street, or it
was tossed off the roof. I vote for tossed off the roof. So how did they get up
to the roof? And why my balcony? Convenience?”

“Maybe they were aiming for the street and missed,” Colin
joked.

I just gave him a look.

“Okay, well, it’s not as difficult to get up to your roof as
you’d like to think it is,” Colin said hurriedly. “It’s not a far jump from the
buildings on either side of you. And if Levi was indeed inside when we went
looking for him earlier, it wouldn’t have been too hard for him to get up
there.”

Much as I hated to admit it, he was right. New Orleanians
never worried about people breaking into the building by crossing the roofs. All
the security protections we put into place were to keep people from breaking in
from the ground level. And getting down from the roof was relatively easy if you
didn’t have a fear of heights. Someone coming across the roofs obviously didn’t
have such a problem. Someone could have come across, lured Levi up the back
ladder, killed him—

And what? Stayed up there all night through the rain until
the time was ripe to drop the body down to my balcony? And then fled back across
the roofs?

It wasn’t likely, but Levi himself could have easily gone up
the ladder when we came looking for him. He could have been hiding out on the
roof.

Who would have known he was up there?

Ugh, my head was starting to hurt again. I poured myself
some more coffee.

The French doors opened, and Venus and Blaine walked back
in. I poured them each a cup of coffee, and they sat down on either side of
Colin at the bar. “No identification,” Venus said after taking a drink. “I’m
going to need you to identify the body.”

“It’s Levi, or rather, the man I knew as Levi Gretsch,” I
said. “I don’t need to look again.”

“When was the last time you saw him alive?” Venus asked,
pulling out her little notepad.

“Around five thirty yesterday afternoon.” She made me go
over the entire thing again. It was a little annoying, but I assumed she wanted
to make sure there were no discrepancies, or if maybe I’d remembered something I
hadn’t thought about the first time around.

She turned to Colin. “And you, Agent Golden? When did you
see him last?”

My eyes darted back and forth between the two of them.

“I never met the man,” Colin replied. He shook his head.
“All I know for sure is he isn’t Levi Gretsch. Marty Gretsch’s grandson is only
twelve years old.”

She nodded. “We’ve confirmed that with the Ohio state
police. He’s living with some relatives in Chicago—apparently, his father was
killed in a car accident a few weeks after his grandfather was murdered.” She
shook her head. “The poor kid’s been through a lot.”

“Was it really an accident?” I blurted out. I blushed when
she gave me one of her patented you-are-such-a-dumbass looks. “I mean, Marty
Gretsch was murdered and then two weeks later his son dies in a car accident.
It’s weird, is all.”

“They did a thorough investigation into the accident. He was
hit by a drunk driver.” She looked at me, and her eyebrows went up. “Scotty,
what did you do to your neck?”

I blew out a breath. “Um. I was mugged last night when I was
on my way to my parents’.” I quickly ran through the whole incident, leaving out
the mugger’s mention of “the eye.”

A muscle twitched in Venus’s jaw.

“You didn’t think,” Blaine said quietly, his face turning
red, “that might be important to our investigation?”

“Get off my back,” I replied. “So I was mugged and didn’t
report it. Arrest me. And don’t you think that’s a bit of a stretch? People get
mugged all the time. I didn’t think it was important.”

“Someone stabbed you in the throat and you
didn’t think
it was important
?” Blaine literally looked like smoke was about to come out
of his ears. “Is there anything else you haven’t told us that you don’t think is
important?”

“I’m so sorry, Detective Tujague,” I snapped. “Let me see,
in the last day a family friend was brutally murdered, my landladies were tied
up, a body wound up somehow on my balcony, and this one”—I gestured at
Colin—“turned up out of the blue. So, yeah, being stabbed kind of seemed a
little unimportant.” I held out my hands. “Cuff me and take me in, Mr.
Detective.”

Blaine had the decency to look a little sheepish. “Sorry,”
he mumbled.

“Cut the drama, Scotty,” Venus said mildly. “Can you
describe your attacker?”

I recounted what happened, beginning with Mom’s phone call.
I described the attacker as best as I could remember—which wasn’t much, since
I’d never gotten a look at his face—and wound up with arriving at Mom’s. The
whole time I was talking, Colin didn’t say a word. He just sat there, his face
expressionless.

“And your arm? What happened to your arm?”

“I shot myself.” He didn’t look at me. “I needed to get
inside Cecile Bradley’s apartment. So I shot myself. It’s no more than a flesh
wound, I aimed so that it wouldn’t be really painful but would be really bloody.
I wasn’t sure if she would let me in if I just called her, but I knew her well
enough to know if I was injured, she would.”

I felt my blood starting to boil. I
knew
he
couldn’t be trusted. My hands were starting to shake. “I knew it,” I said, my
voice trembling. “I knew you couldn’t be trusted!” I was furious. I don’t think
I’ve ever been that angry in my life. “You shot yourself! Oh my
God
!”

“Scotty, please.” Venus held up her hand. “I said cut the
drama—I’m not interested.”

I started pacing around the kitchen. “Was anything you told
me true?” I seethed. “Or Angela? You really enjoy making a fool out of me!”

I knew I was losing it. I tried to get a hold of myself, but
nothing was working. I tried to take deep breaths, closing my eyes and trying to
find a prayer for strength and calm, but no words came to me. Nothing he said
could be believed. He was a liar, pure and simple.

“Scotty—” He reached out and grabbed my hand.

The words started pouring out of me. “Uranium, right? This
whole thing about world security and terrorism and the stupid damned Eye of Kali
was all just a bunch of bullshit, wasn’t it?”

Colin’s face went white.

And just as quickly as it came, the anger drained out of me.
My legs became wobbly. Out of the corners of my eyes I could see things turning
gray, and the gray crept across my sightline. I tried to grab hold of the
counter but there wasn’t any strength in my hands.
No, no, no! Not in front
of the cops!

“And just why did you need to get into Cecile Bradley’s
house?” I heard Venus ask. Her voice sounded like it was a million miles away,
like someone had turned the volume on a television down to an almost inaudible
level.

Everything was starting to spin.

“I believe Benjamin Garrett was murdered,” Colin replied,
“because for the last forty years he has been in possession of a stolen artifact
from a small country called Pleshiwar. I believe he knew that agents unfriendly
to the current Pleshiwarian government were getting close to him, and he had to
get rid of it. I believe he put it inside a stuffed rabbit, which he in turn
passed along to Scotty, who then gave it to his mother.” His face was grim. “As
long as that rabbit is inside her home, Bob and Cecile Bradley are in mortal
danger.”

Everything was getting foggy and I tried to keep it at bay.

Mom…

Dad…

And everything went dark.

I was falling through a cloud.

I wasn’t afraid, because I felt surrounded by love and
peace.

I drifted down through the cloud.

I came to rest on a soft bed of grass, and felt warm,
loved and at peace.

“Scotty!” a voice called from my right.

I got to my feet and looked around for the voice. “I’m
here! Is that you, Goddess?”

“It is I.”

There were so many things I wanted to ask Jer. So many
questions, so many things I wanted to know the answers to. “Why did you leave me
for so long?” was all I could find the words for, and I sounded like a spoiled
child, ready to stamp his little foot in rage.

“I never left you, Scotty. I was always with you, but I
couldn’t speak with you,” she replied from the mist. “Your heart was closed to
me.” Her tone was gently chiding. “But I watched over you, as I always watch
over you.”

“But—”

“You are human, Scotty. It is not for you to understand
the ways of the universe, how everything works and how everything is connected
together. You will understand all one day, but that day is far into the future
as you understand time.” Her voice sounded hollow, different somehow than it
used to. “But I am with you again, and you need never be afraid.”

“But I don’t know what to think, what to believe!”

“Your heart knows the answers, Scotty. The answers lie
within your heart. You think your heart has been broken, but it is not possible
for a heart to break. It can hurt, and it can harden, but it can never truly
break.”

“But—”

“Everything is a test, Scotty. The question is, are you
brave enough to trust in your own heart again?”

The mist began to dissipate, swirling around me. The
feeling of peace and love began to fade away, and the light in the distance
began to grow brighter, and I started floating toward it, moving faster and
faster as the light grew brighter…

…and the last thing I heard as I moved into the light
again were the words “trust in your heart, Scotty…”

I opened my eyes.

My head was resting in Colin’s lap. I looked up and saw
Venus and Blaine staring down at me. Their eyes and mouths were wide open.
Blaine was white as a ghost, and Venus looked like she was going to throw up.

“See?” I heard Colin say. “I told you he’d be fine. I’ve
seen this happen before.”