Strange Brew (The Tortie Kitten Mystery Trilogy Series Book 2) Page 10

  Sketch put the acetate back in the bag. “Not that I’ve ever heard. And an acetate with sleeve art? That’s practically unheard of.”

  And yet, Vandermoot had a copy with artwork. “Who else might get an acetate?”

  “Record company execs might want one. Just in case the band under contract had produced a substandard product, or were known for controversial material.”

  Or if the record was an experimental way to brainwash people, I thought.

  Moses gave me a speculative look. “Think you’ll ever get the guy who cooled Vandermoot?”

  I nodded. “I think I’m getting really close,” I said.

  Across the room, I saw Darren Strathmore wheeling a suitcase full of vinyl. I braced him. “Mom didn’t sell all your albums?”

  “The woman is crazy. Do you know what she was selling these for?”

  “Two bucks apiece,” I remembered, “Four for seven dollars.”

  “Most of these go for thirty, fifty, a hundred bucks!”

  “Any takers?”

  His face fell. “No. Nobody’s buying much.”

  “Have you seen the posters? The reward?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, that was one I had in my collection.”

  “Where did you get it?” I thought of Ugly’s prompting.

  “Oh, hell, I don’t know. I used to spend every weekend at garage sales and flea markets. Could’ve been anywhere. It might’ve been one of my Dad’s. He wasn’t a real collector, but he bought a lot of vinyl new, back in the day. I traded out most of his Sinatra and Bing Crosby a long time ago. Wish I’d held onto some of that.”

  His words gave me pause. “Do you think your father would know where that album came from?”

  Darren shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, he never paid any attention to music, as far as I remember. Why he had those old records in the first place I can’t say. Kids collect things, and he picked them up when he was a kid, so...”

  I put Strathmore, Senior on my radar for an interview. “Are you familiar with the name game?” I took a shot.

  “Oh, sure. Shirley Ellis. Shirley, Shirley, bo-berley, banana fanna fo-firley.” He bent down to his portable record collection. “I got a copy here somewhere, Congress Records, 1965. You want to buy it?”

  “No,” I said.

  “It’s in near mint condition.”

  “Yeah, I’m gonna pass.”

  Chapter 17

  The record swap, while a good idea of Shen’s, wasn’t panning out. I walked into the quad and called the hospital. Shen was still unconscious, but the surgery had gone well. My day had left me exhausted. I needed to get something to eat before going back to the hospital. I’d need to spend all day tomorrow writing reports, especially since I’d discharged my weapon.

  My phone beeped as I walked back to the vehicle. Agent Dru Herald.

  “Are you all right? I’ve heard a lot of chatter about a sniper?”

  “I’m fine. My partner’s out of surgery. I need to eat something before I pass out,” I said.

  “Perfect. Where can we meet?”

  “I’m on the campus right now.”

  “How about the deli on Atlantic and Formal Court? That’s off the Miracle Mile. Meet you in fifteen.”

  She hung up before I could accept or decline. A sandwich sounded awesome right now. I headed south. It was long past lunch, and parking was easy to find. I walked in just a moment ahead of Drusilla Herald and Echo Hutchinson.

  “You look wrung out, Mary,” Echo said, her expression sympathetic.

  “They have really great pastrami here,” Dru said. “Why don’t you two find a seat?”

  “Coffee,” I begged.

  I sat across from Echo. “Your partner was shot? Are you okay? That must have been scary.”

  She wore a pencil skirt suit over a collarless white blouse, small hoops shown beneath her black, ear-length bob. In my eyes, she looked like a little girl playing dress up. Had I ever looked that young? Somehow, seeing her without the usual collegiate sweat shirt brought home her real age. Echo was probably ten years older than Memorie.

  “It was scary before,” I said, “and scary after. During the shooting, we fell back on training.”

  “Why was it scary before?” Echo asked.

  I thought back. Both Chuck and I had become unnerved in the altar cave. But why? Surely, a pentagram carved into the rock wouldn’t send us running. Before I could chase down the thought, Dru arrived with a tray of sandwiches and coffee. I tore in, half-starved to death.

  When I looked up from my savage eating, I saw that neither Dru nor Echo had touched their food. They were exchanging looks. Both were uncharacteristically quiet.

  Unbidden, a memory flashed into my mind.

  “YOU’RE NOT HUNGRY?” I sat across from Memorie at the kitchen table. She stirred her food with a fork, head supported on one hand.

  “No.” She didn’t look up at me.

  “But macaroni and cheese with tiny ham cubes is your favorite.” Or rather, the only food I could cook that Memorie really enjoyed. Murph, our usual chef, was in Miami at a poker tournament.

  My girl didn’t say anything for a while. Then, without looking up, she asked, “Is my mommy a crap whore?”

  I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. “Who told you that?”

  “Nobody. They said she was in jail because she was a crap whore, and I was probably a crap whore, too.”

  “You are definitely not a crap whore.” Kathleen Murphy, her mother, definitely was a crack whore. Probably a crap whore, too. “Hey, kiddo. Look at me.”

  Memorie looked up from her stirring.

  “Your mother has a kind of sickness. It makes her do things she shouldn’t, but she really can’t help it. Hopefully, when she gets out, she won’t be sick anymore.”

  “Could she die?” Memorie asked, eyes grave.

  “Well, like any sickness, if she doesn’t get help, her health could get pretty bad. But she isn’t going to stay sick. Not when she has you to come back to.”

  I really didn’t want to defend Kathleen. She was deplorable, and not just because of her addiction. Kathleen had often left Memorie alone as she pursued her habit. When she was arrested, we found Memorie in a squat covered in rat droppings, empty beer cans, and broken booze bottles. Her babysitters were a stoned Outlaws biker and his biker mama. At least, she had sitters on that occasion.

  “You think so?” Memorie asked.

  “I do. Because you’re the awesome-est.” I put my fork down. “You wanna get some Ben and Jerry’s, bundle up on the couch, and watch Disney movies?”

  She thought about it. “Okay. Can we watch ‘Land Before Time?’”

  “WHAT AREN’T YOU TELLING me?” I eyed the PTA members.

  Drusilla poked out her lower lip for a moment. “Let’s talk about the money first.”

  “Where did it go?”

  “To places we expected. There were payment requests made by a real estate shell company, requests for cashiers checks from a money service business chain and a purchase order for cryptocurrency from a brokerage. All of these are under federal scrutiny, and the fact that your money went to all of these places is evidence for prosecuting them.”

  I was incredulous. “My bank just went with these requests?”

  Dru nodded. “White collar financial crime is not my bailiwick. Each of these transactions were backed up by your electronic signature.”

  “I didn’t know I had an electronic signature.”

  “Maybe you don’t,” Drusilla said.

  Echo nodded. “Identity theft.”

  “Pretty ham-handed ID theft, too,” Drusilla said. “There wasn’t much in the way of trickery to cover the transfers.”

  “This can’t be simply ID theft,” I said. “I had cash taken from my home. They even left change behind.”

  “Right. There is a magic component. In fact, I owe the Feldbergs fifty-two dollars and seventy-eight cents,” Dru said. “Money that disappeared from Jerry’s wallet a
nd Joy’s purse. Jerry’s brain keeps track of things like that, down to the penny.”

  Of course it did. “Explain that.”

  “That’s a spell,” Echo said. “I asked my sister Quinn about it. She keeps the family grimoire. Spells to make stuff disappear aren’t very complicated.”

  “Disappear, huh? Where is this going?”

  Dru ate some sandwich, stalling. Finally, she came out with it. “I know you don’t want to hear this, Mary. We’re pretty convinced that you’ve been scammed by a long con.”

  I couldn’t speak for a moment. This had to be more than a confidence game.

  “Jerry and Joy Feldberg are highly experienced paranormal investigators. The FBI uses them, on occasion, especially in debunking hauntings. Usually these supposed hauntings are related to a scam.”

  My jaw clamped so hard my teeth hurt. I couldn’t believe Dru had betrayed me like this. I remember Jerry talking about debunking my “ghost,” and feeling that same sense of betrayal.

  “In this case, Jerry and Joy encountered something they hadn’t seen before. It was something they couldn’t handle.”

  For some reason, this made me feel better. Like I was vindicated. “The Angle Man,” I said.

  “Nope. No looming figure that behaved like a shadow. Joy caught giant, demonic spiders on her camera. They came up from the cellar, crawled all over the walls. She said, I quote, ‘their asses were the size of basketballs,’ end quote. Jerry heard a pack of wild dogs in his headphones. He said he thought the house was surrounded by barking, howling dogs. Now, Joy says she didn’t hear any dogs barking. Jerry didn’t see any enormous spiders.”

  “Those were things they both mentioned being afraid of,” I said.

  Dru nodded. “Phobic, in fact. It was enough to drive them, screaming, out of your house at three in the morning.”

  Oh-three-hundred was the Angle Man’s favorite time to visit.

  “Do you have any phobias, Mary?” Echo asked.

  I shook my head. “Not really. I’m not good with heights.”

  “And the Angle Man hasn’t visited you in your new location, right?”

  “Right.”

  Echo sat back. “Did you have internet service in Florida? Wireless stuff, smart TVs, laptops or a CPU?”

  “Yeah, all of that.” Back when I could afford it. Back before I was strong-armed into paying off the debt to keep Memorie’s soul.

  “Can I see your phone?” Echo asked.

  I handed it over. Kids and cell phones—what are you gonna do?

  “What is this, some kind of old person phone?” Echo smiled. “Such big buttons.”

  “It’s a burner,” I said. “It’s cheaper for me to pay for minutes instead of a service.”

  “Practically a half step up from a flip phone,” Echo handed it back.

  “So I don’t have a fancy phone. So what?”

  The young woman frowned at me. “My family are beekeepers. They sell candles and honey from a little store in the middle of nowhere. I don’t have a fancy phone, either. On the other hand, I do have a little niece who loves to play dinosaurs. Sometimes, magic weirdness stresses my relationship with my aunt. It makes me crazy angsty, when I can’t hang out with my niece. So I’m on your side here, okay? Here’s why your phone is a thing.

  “Whatever the Angle Man is, isn’t exactly paranormal.”

  “What the hell is it, then? My imagination?”

  “Yes, in a way.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “When the investigators were in your house, their wi-fi hub received a signal. It was like a cell phone signal, and it broadcast a temporary software hack. The hub sent data to their computers, their cameras, their audio gear. It caused the high tech stuff to generate frequencies. We’re still examining the recordings, but we’ve already uncovered infrasound, which is below human hearing, and hypersound, above human hearing.”

  I’d heard this before, but from a crazy former rock star who had attempted to murder his band mates. “These sounds, do they implant ideas in your brain?”

  Echo shrugged. “We don’t know. What we do know is that they generate fear. Your investigators experienced their phobias come to life. Now, in order to grab onto such personal, deeply held fears, there must be a magic component as well.”

  “Your house doesn’t have wi-fi, or any internet connection,” Dru said. “The Angle Man needs some bandwidth in order to appear.”

  I gulped down some coffee. “What does any of this mean? I don’t have an Angle Man phobia. Money is gone from my account, apparently through identity theft.”

  “That’s why we feel it’s a con,” Dru said. “It doesn’t work unless you believe that this Angle Man is stealing from you. You might take action if you realize that you’re not being watched by some supernatural entity. It’s all designed to keep you so fearful, that you do what they want.”

  “I don’t buy it.”

  “Here’s some evidence. There have been three fairly major astronomical events since you moved to Delta Vista, including a total lunar eclipse. No Angle Man appearance. He didn’t appear because he couldn’t, because you don’t have fairly standard technology in your house.”

  “Maybe they weren’t major enough.” The Angle Man was real. He scared the living bejeezus out of me.

  “Okay, how about this: A cashiers check for five thousand dollars cash was created at a branch in the Bay Area. It’s being held for someone. You wanna guess who?”

  Did I?

  “Kathleen Anne Murphy,” Dru said. “Still don’t think this is a long con?”

  Chapter 18

  “I specifically told you not to look for her,” I said through my teeth.

  “We didn’t. But we know where she is now. Like I said, this money laundering scheme isn’t particularly sophisticated. I’m guessing they don’t really care much about protecting Kathleen Murphy.”

  “Is Memorie with her? Is she okay? Is she doing well in school?” I blinked back tears. “Is she taller?”

  “We haven’t looked, as per your request. However, the minute she picks up that check, we can arrest her for extortion. Kathleen will be swept up in the RICO case, probably extradited back to Florida. You could swoop in and take custody of Memorie. She’s been in your custody before, so even if you’re not a blood relative, chances are good that it will be granted.”

  It sounded good. In fact, it sounded great. Except... “What about her soul?”

  Dru and Echo exchanged a look.

  “Honestly, we don’t know. It might just be part of the con,” Dru said.

  “From my point of view, Kathleen’s a criminal. Just being with her mother might put her soul at risk, or at least her development, her future behavior,” Echo said. “I’m not a psychologist. My sister Quinn is a psychiatric social worker, and I’ve taken a bunch of classes. But Kathleen’s probably a terrible influence on Memorie in general.”

  “On the other hand, there has to be a root basis for the magic to work. Even if it is black magic,” Dru said. “If you could just randomly extort someone with this spell or ceremony or whatever it is, there would be no reason for a criminal organization to engage in riskier businesses, right? It’s even easier money than running a casino.”

  “You’re saying that the debt is real,” I wished my coffee was a scotch.

  “This is magic,” Dru shrugged. “Mostly theoretical at this point, and backed up with some technology we don’t quite understand. But even magic follows certain rules. I’m guessing there is a debt.”

  As a cop, I tended toward seeing things in black and white. A crime was a crime. Yet extortion, even if the victim was me, was probably better than prostitution and drug dealing. It eliminated Kathleen bringing tricks or dealers home, where Memorie lived. At the same time, there was no guarantee that I would get custody. Memorie could go into the system. It might be years before I could get her out.

  “Don’t pick Kathleen up,” I said.

  Dru’s mouth became a thin line.<
br />
  “Not until I’m sure about the soul thing.”

  “We’re still going through with an investigation. We have to.”

  “Kathleen picking up that check will be evidence enough, once the case moves forward. For now, let me just make sure. Okay?”

  Dru shook her head. “The case is already moving in Florida. If this ties into it, and I’m sure it will, I can’t give you a time frame.”

  “I understand,” I said. But there was some time for me to investigate the Soul Brokers. I needed to know how real the threat was. In my bones, I knew that they had some power. I needed to know just how much. In the meantime, a man had been murdered. My partner had been shot. I needed to clear this case as quickly as possible. Then I could hunt down the Soul Brokers and their enforcer, the Angle Man.

  SHEN FINALLY WOKE UP, gazing at me from half-lidded eyes. “Damn,” he said.

  I’d been sitting in the chair next to his bed for hours. “Damn?”

  “I was hoping to see Josephine Gustafson.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you.”

  “What time is it?” He looked around the room, and found a glass of water on the bedside table. It took him some odd maneuvering to get the straw in his mouth.

  “Almost zero-hundred,” I said.

  “What’s my prognosis?”

  I’d already talked to the doctor. “They patched up a chip in your femur, removed bone and bullet fragments. You’ll probably make a full recovery.”

  “My folks know?”

  “I sent them home. They’ll be back in the morning.”

  He took some more sips. “I hate putting them through this.”

  “You can put them at ease once we nail these bastards,” I said. “Before the surgery, you said you knew who killed Vandermoot.”

  Shen blinked a few times. “I did?”

  “You said something about the name game.”

  “Shirley-Shirley bo-Birley?” He shook his head. “I don’t remember that.”

  “You said you were looking into the band, Scarlet Jack.”