Deadlock (FBI Thriller #24)(55)

“Went along with what, exactly, Candy?” he asked, rubbing his hands up and down her arms.

“She didn’t tell me, if only she had. All I know is she got a call from someone—she wouldn’t tell me who—and she set up a séance with Mrs. Manvers right away. She was excited about seeing her, really upbeat. She said we’d make enough money to maybe go to France, to Cannes, lie on the beach, hold a séance once in a while, order up French spirits. She was so pleased with herself, but now look.” She put her face in her hands and sobbed. “I told her. I told her.”

Sherlock said, “Candy, show us to the living room, to the bloodstain.”

Candy let them into the house, but she stopped at the living room doorway. “It’s blood. I don’t want to see it again. I can’t. It’s hers, I know it. Agent Savich, she was usually so careful, researched all her clients down to when they had their last cavity filled.”

The blood was on the edge of the Oriental carpet, next to one of the sofas. It looked hours old, smudged and streaked at one edge where someone had struggled to stand or was pulled up. They found two slugs. Nothing else seemed disturbed or damaged. Savich called Ben Raven at Metro and the FBI forensic team, then he asked, “Candy, do you know where Zoltan’s cell phone is?”

“Her purse is gone, and her cell isn’t charging, I checked. They took her car, too. But maybe it makes more sense Zoltan took her own cell phone and her car? Not some stranger who didn’t know where she kept her car keys? Well, they were always in her purse, but still. Zoltan isn’t dead, please, she can’t be.”

Sherlock walked back to Candy and lightly touched her hand to the woman’s arm. “Candy, we’ll do DNA testing and know soon enough if that’s Zoltan’s blood. Tell us, do you think Zoltan was the real deal? Not with Mrs. Manvers, but with her other clients? Do you believe she really could contact the dead?”

Candy blinked up at her. “Good heavens, no, Agent Sherlock. She even told me once if she died, the last thing she’d want would be to have to deal with any idiots she left behind.” She paused a moment. “But you know, she thought she was helping some of her clients deal with their grief and their loneliness, and some of them certainly left happier. But sometimes she took advantage, charging clients too much, and too often. She had no qualms about that, especially those clients who wanted to find something the dead person left behind, like money or jewelry.” Candy paused, huffed out a breath. “She was very upset when someone attacked Mrs. Manvers. I know she made some calls about it on her cell, but I don’t know who she called. Then you made her go to the Hoover Building to talk to you, Agent Savich. She was even more upset when she came home. She tried to hide it, but I know her very well. She even canceled some clients. She’s never done that before.”

Sherlock said, “How long have you worked for her?”

“Zoltan and I have been together since I graduated with a degree in human studies with nothing but debt to show for it. I was waitressing in the Village in New York when she found me. She always paid me well—I mean, she pays me well. I refuse to believe she’s dead. I’ve always admired her for how well she put on a show. She laughed when I called it performance art.”

Savich asked her to wait outside for the FBI forensic team while he and Sherlock went upstairs to search Zoltan’s office. There were drawers of meticulous files on her clients going back more than a decade, their personal histories, their likes, their dislikes, their relationships with both the living and the dead, but there was nothing they could find on Rebekah Manvers.





36


ST. LUMIS

TUESDAY MORNING

Pippa hugged herself against the cold as she hurried into Major Trumbo’s B&B, Chief Wilde behind her. Mrs. Trumbo was coming out of the dining room with only a small stack of plates in her arms. Most of her Halloween crowd had left St. Lumis.

“Ms. Cinelli! I was worried when you didn’t come down for breakfast. I was going to go up and check on you—” She broke off and stared at Chief Wilde, an eyebrow rising nearly to her hairline. She said slowly, smiling, “But I see if I’d knocked on your door, I wouldn’t have gotten an answer.” She looked at each of them. “Chief, what are you doing here with Ms. Cinelli this early on a chilly Tuesday morning, as if you’re just now bringing her back? You only met on Saturday night, isn’t that right?”

Mrs. Trumbo was teasing them about sleeping together? Talk about fast work. Well, maybe his bed would have been more comfortable than the rock with a thin mattress in his small guest bedroom. “Good morning, Mrs. Trumbo. It’s very kind of you to be concerned about me. You’re right. I didn’t sleep in my beautiful honeymoon suite last night. You see, yesterday someone hit me on the head and tied me up in that old abandoned grocery store on the edge of town. I escaped to the chief’s house.”

Mrs. Trumbo blinked, laughed, and wagged her finger at Pippa. “You’re making that up, Ms. Cinelli. Not that it’s any of my business who you want to play with. Why, I remember my first husband, he—well, that’s not important. No need to spit out a wild story. Someone hit you and tied you up? That wouldn’t be funny, young lady, though I suppose it makes a fine tale.”

“To be totally accurate, he hit me on the head twice, ma’am.”