No Saving Throw Page 4

  He nodded. “Grilled me. I think they wanted me to say I was pissed, that I killed Wes because he made Cody into a pain in my ass, but I disappointed them.” He looked at Jordan. “Like, a dozen kids and their parents saw me in the game room. They’ll vouch for me.”

  Jordan held up her hands. “Don’t look at me, man. I’m not on this one.”

  Hector nodded, satisfied. “Mostly the cops asked me why Cody and Wes were arguing. They also asked why Wes is in the LARPing group, too, if Paige is his ex. They were fixated on that, seemed to think it was weird he’d want to hang out with the girl he used to date and her new boyfriend.”

  “They know that one isn’t live action, right?” I said. “The group that kicked Cody out?”

  “Does it make a difference?” Jordan asked.

  “Probably. It’s . . . less weird to muggles. Anyway, they’re completely separate groups, even if they do involve a lot of the same people.”

  “Huh.” The cop look flashed across Jordan’s face again as she made a mental note. I patted myself on the back for helping.

  “They asked me about Paige and Nick, too,” Bay said. “Their mood, why they said they wanted to add a game tonight.”

  “Why did they want to?” I asked.

  Bay lifted her hands. “Your guess is as good as mine. All of them were here tonight, though, so it wasn’t like Paige and Nick arranged a fake game just to off Wes.”

  We stared at her, and she clapped her hands to her mouth. “Oh man,” she said through her fingers. “That was horrible, I did not—”

  I waved her silent. “No worries. We know.”

  “Who found him?” Hector asked.

  I shook my head, and Bay turned her hands up toward the ceiling in a shrug. I looked at Jordan.

  “Erm—” She blushed. “I shouldn’t.”

  I tilted my head and glared.

  “Fine. Whatever. It was one of the store owners.”

  “Which one?”

  “You’re not going to like it.”

  “It was Meghan?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Shit.” Hector twitched reflexively, and I added, “I am not putting a dollar in the jar this time.”

  They all stared at me while I glared at the wall. Just what I needed—my archenemy finding one of my kids dead while playing a game nominally under my supervision. I was screwed. “She made the call?”

  “Yeah. She was leaving for the night when she found him.”

  “What was she doing in the basement?” Hector asked. He had a point—Meghan’s store was on the main ground level. Our store was technically in the basement, though we had a street exit, as well.

  “I’ll ask Craig,” I said. “He was here. We’ll find out.”

  “‘We?’” Jordan asked.

  “Yes, we. We need to know who killed Wes and why. He died on my watch, Jordan.”

  Her eyes crinkled in sympathy. “This was not your fault. You don’t need to atone for it or anything like that—”

  “I’m not atoning for anything. But this is going to scare people. Come on, a LARPer died with stab wounds in his neck? While playing a vampire game? We’ll be very lucky if we don’t end up with a The Dungeon Master scenario on our hands, but worse, because it looks like someone else killed him.”

  “They haven’t ruled it a murder,” Jordan interjected.

  “Come on,” Bay said. “She has a point. At the best of times, people think LARPers are a joke—at the worst, people think they’re insane. With someone dead, someone like Wes who was sweet and harmless, they’re going to look downright deranged.”

  Jordan’s brow creased.

  “We need to do what we can to prevent this from creating an all-out panic about the store and our little family,” I said.

  Hector looked green around the gills. “I don’t think they’ll just—let us help.”

  Bay rolled her eyes. “Of course they won’t. But we can Scooby it up. And Jordan will help.”

  “She will?” Jordan said.

  “Yes, you will,” I told her. “This is important to you, too. Remember when I used to sneak you fantasy novels because your mom thought they were the devil’s handiwork? And Bill from the comic book store had to talk her down when she found your stash? Well, this is that moment all over again. It’s my turn to be Bill.”

  Jordan sighed. “Fine. Where do you want to start?”

  I smiled at her. “Thank you.” But when I paused to consider her question, I came up blank. We needed suspects, motives, a time line, probably—things that suddenly seemed very real and scary. “Well,” I said. “Uh . . . we know Cody is a suspect. And Nick and Paige.”

  “We want to know how Meghan found him,” Hector said.

  “Right. And we need to talk to the rest of their troupe. And . . . um . . . Max? The security guard?”

  Bay snorted but she nodded agreement. “He may not hear much over his own voice, but he sees quite a bit.”

  I blinked. “We . . . may need to work on the quips.”

  “Yeah, okay.” Her shoulders slumped.

  “I have to talk to Donald tomorrow morning. Which of you two is supposed to open?”

  “Me again.” Hector grimaced.

  “Well, don’t come in till noon. I’ll delay opening. I think that’s fair, given the circumstances.”

  He moved like he wanted to fist bump me but thought better of it and just twitched in his seat. “Thanks.”

  I nodded. “So tomorrow afternoon, let’s try to find out what Nick and Paige’s story is, what the others in the troupe saw, and who Max might have seen in the building.”

  “What about Cody?” Hector asked. “And Meghan?”

  “I can handle Meghan. And Cody . . .” I hesitated. He seemed to be the closest thing the cops had to a suspect, so I didn’t want to spook him or piss off Jordan’s bosses.

  “I’ll find out what I can about him,” Jordan said, resigned. “I can at least tell you what he told the detective who interviewed him. Unless they think they’re actually going to arrest him, in which case I really shouldn’t.”

  “Fair enough. So there we go. It’s a start anyway.”

  “You really think they’re going to blame gaming?” Hector asked.

  I wanted to say no. I wanted to offer reassurances and kind words, but I knew he was too smart to believe them. On the other hand, he was smart enough to know when I was lying, and he might appreciate the gesture.

  “I’m sure we’ll be fine,” I said. I meant it.

  Hector’s face twisted into a grim smile.

  “In the long run,” Bay added.

  “Right.” I stood and looked from Bay to Hector. “Things might get ugly for a while, but they’ll get better. I promise.”

  I met Jordan’s eyes. She looked guarded. She knew I could promise no such thing; she also knew I had no choice but to try. She nodded at me. I had one ally, at least, who understood the stakes . . . and knew how much I had to lose.

  4

  THE LEAD HEADLINE IN the Saturday edition of the White Lake Courier read, “Youth Killed in Bizarre Game Store Murder.”

  I crumpled the paper up and stuffed it into my backpack before I left my house. I could not let it distract me from my meeting with Donald. I skipped my usual geek attire and dressed in dark jeans and a nice blazer. Even with enough makeup to cover the dark circles beneath my eyes, I looked like crap—but looking good might be worse on a day like today.

  I got to the store a little after nine, curious to see whether the other stores in the mall had opened. Most of the lights on the upper floors appeared to be on, but the lowest level was dark, and Ten Again looked abandoned when it should have been bustling. My homemade sign hung sadly askew on the door, explaining our late opening.

  As I walked up the sidewalk, I saw that our doorstep was littered with small knickknacks and figurines. Someone had left a tiny candle, burned out, with some flowers and a picture of Wes. A min
iature knight stood next to a Star Wars action figure, and someone had scribbled, “We love you, Wes!” on the sidewalk in chalk. There was a pile of dice stacked like a cairn, and a few Spellcasters cards were cast to one side.

  My breath seemed to come as though through a straw, thin and not enough to lift my lungs. Poor Wes. Overlooked in life, cherished in death. Even if it was too little, too late—which I didn’t think it was—it was balm to my battered soul.

  Wiping my eyes, I dug in my bag. I knew just the card I would leave for Wes from my own Spellcasters deck: Yanil, the Deathless Angel. One of my better cards, but I would give anything for its power to be real. Might as well play it here, on the sidewalk, in the cold, real world, and see what happened.

  I fished out the card and palmed it. The little offerings were blocking the door. I wouldn’t get rid of them, but I did need to move them. I squatted there on the sidewalk, indifferent to anyone who might see me, and began to scoot the votive candle and toys to rest under the window display. Someone had left a tiny statue of the Virgin Mary. She seemed rather out of place, but when I stood her next to Han Solo, she looked a bit more comfortable.

  I almost missed it. As I fanned out the cards others had left so that I could add my own, I noticed one of them: Elyssa, Spirit of Autumn. A gorgeous card but not a rare one. I wondered what significance it had, but then I saw that someone had scratched off the face of the woman in the drawing.

  I shuddered. Talk about creepy. Should I take it out? Or was it meant as some sort of commentary on how Wes, sweet but not uncommon, had been scratched out of the world in an act of violent, pointless destruction?

  In the end, I left it, deciding that it would be wrong to silence someone’s expression of grief, however strange I might find it. I stood, shouldered my bag, and let myself into the store, locking the door behind me.

  I left the lights out on the main selling floor but switched on my office lights before I went to peer out into the mall. Ten Again was on the lowest level, down the hall from the central ground floor lobby. The offices and shops on the interior of the lower level, like my spillover gaming room, had no windows, and even though my main store had street access, it was around the corner from the square itself; the spaces were cheaper here, which was why I could afford to rent on the square at all.

  We also had less eavesdropping capability here. When I looked down the hallway toward the fountain floor where Wes had been found, I saw nothing and no one—most of the spaces on this level were rented by nonretail businesses, and they were dark and silent on a normal Saturday. I doubted that any of the shops closer to the atrium would want my curious nose poking in their doors so soon after the tragedy.

  On a sudden morbid whim, I closed the door to Ten Again, locked it, and strode down the hall and through the deserted atrium, past the dry fountain and the café at the corner of the lobby. The tiny restaurant had pulled its bistro chairs in against its windows. It was closed and dark, like the rest of the shops on this level.

  Maintenance had turned off the fountain, and the building was silent, echoing. I stopped in front of the elevator and pressed the call button. I flexed my hands as I waited and glanced over my shoulder. My back felt cold, exposed. When the elevator came, I hit the shiny number five and rode it up to the empty floor from which Wes had probably fallen, the highest spot in the building.

  As soon as the elevator doors opened, I went to the gallery railing and looked down. More than fifty feet below, the tiled floor of the basement lobby gleamed back up at me. Yellow police tape still lined the center of the room.

  Had Wes fallen to that floor? Had someone dropped him over this railing? I touched the polished wood, chest-high on my five-foot-five frame. It would take strength to throw someone over this railing, and it would take work to fall over it. No, Wes’s death had been no accident, and someone really had to have wanted him dead to make it happen. My skin crawled. If the cops were letting anyone think it had been an accident, it was simply to keep panic from driving people out of this building, out of my store. But that would happen anyway.

  Regardless of who did it, Wes had died while gaming. He had been here because of that game, and there was every chance that his killer had been here because of it, too. I didn’t want to believe it, but if I wanted to protect my store, I had to look at my gamers, my people, with just as much suspicion as the cops would. And that meant looking at them like murderers.

  The elevator chimed at having been called away, and I turned to step in before it vanished. It was time to go.

  Back in my office, I flopped into my chair, opened my backpack, and drew out my wadded-up copy of the Saturday paper.

  The headline practically leapt off the page. “Wes Bowen, 21, was found dead in Independence Square Mall late last night, White Lake Police said.” Donald had to be just thrilled that his building made the first sentence; I certainly was at seeing my store’s name in the second. “According to Public Information Officer Michael Spitz, Bowen was taking part in a live action role-playing game sponsored by Ten Again, a tabletop gaming store owned by White Lake native Autumn Sinclair. Police are calling the death suspicious, though they have not yet ruled it a murder.”

  No one was around to demand their dollar. I swore badly enough my mom would have washed out my mouth with soap.

  The article went on to talk about Wes’s death, his parents, his friends, his associations with the store, and his love of gaming. Naturally, it discussed live action role-playing in a way that made it seem like an outlet for angsty, violent adults rather than just a grown-up game of pretend. I skimmed most of it, not needing the details about how the rest of the world perceived us. I already knew.

  I crumpled the paper back up and threw it into the garbage instead of the recycling. That would show the White Lake Courier.

  It was bad, so bad. In a few hours, the store would open, and we would welcome mourners and buzzards alike. But for now, I was alone with the cards and dice, the books and figurines. I was home, but I felt very alone and very frightened.

  Grant money and solar panels, ex-boyfriends and gaming tournaments, all seemed small and distant. I didn’t give a crap about the grant right now, and I doubted I had a snowball’s chance in hell of getting it after the newspaper article today. Ten Again would be notorious, home of the murder-games, and Independence Square Mall would be tainted by association. Meghan would thank me for that when she saw me again.

  But none of that mattered.

  Wes Bowen had died while gaming, and the world would blame the gaming.

  Heedless of my carefully applied make-up, I put my head down on my desk and cried.

  5

  I SPENT MOST OF the day hiding in my office doing routine store tasks, trying to avoid my own thoughts as well as unwanted visitors. When my office door opened abruptly in the afternoon, I jumped.

  “They’re all here,” Bay said. She tilted her head, peering around the office door. “All the LARPers from last night? They’re here.”

  “Oh!” I glanced at the clock. I’d spent most of Saturday afternoon reading the building’s energy usage reports for the last year—fascinating stuff—in preparation for making my final presentation to the grant board, should I get the chance.

  Which I wouldn’t.

  They would select the finalists, and I wouldn’t be among them. Doing the research was a distraction, nothing more, and all it had given me was a sense of fatality and a nagging tension headache. Put that on a T-shirt.

  In the secondary gaming room, Wes’s troupe huddled together in a circle of chairs. They looked like a support group meeting, and I supposed they were—survivors, mourners, frightened scapegoats. Hopefully not that last one—I’d do anything to protect them from emotional death at the hands of an angry crowd.

  But first I had to prove to myself that they weren’t guilty.

  Olivia and José, the other two regulars, sat opposite each other, looking at the floor. I glanced at them, but my at
tention quickly went elsewhere: in the direction of Nick and Paige, who were sitting together, holding hands. Paige stared blankly into space, her face white. Without her usual sparkle, she looked like a different person, older and more serious. My heart sank, seeing her. Last night had changed her. Did she blame herself? Or, worse, did she feel guilt over her ex-boyfriend’s death? Had her skinny hands helped pitch Wes’s limp form over the balcony?

  I swallowed. “Hi, guys,” I said in a serious tone that rang false. I dragged a chair over and joined their circle. Hector nodded at me from across the room—he sat a little outside the group, behind Nick and Paige. Not exactly undercover, but I imagined he’d been listening to every word of their conversation from the moment they walked in the door.

  “How’s everyone doing?” I asked.

  A few of them shrugged, and Paige sniffled. Nick looked at me. “How do you think we’re doing, Autumn?”

  He was in his alpha-male mood, but I could hardly blame him. It was an inane, insensitive question. “I know. I know it’s awful, and it’s not going to get better for a while.”

  “What do you mean?” Paige’s eyes were bloodshot, swollen half-shut.

  “Well, the cops questioned all of you, didn’t they? And they’re not done.”

  “I don’t know why,” Nick said. “It was Cody. You know it was Cody.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “He came down to yell at us last night when we were trying to play. Stormed up to Wes and started yelling.”

  “Why Wes in particular?”

  Nick shrugged. “Who knows? Freak show. He said something about being a chicken shit.”

  “He left right after that, though,” Olivia said. She was less familiar to me than Paige and Nick. “Went back upstairs after you yelled at him.”

  “Yeah, upstairs. Wes fell.”

  Olivia clammed up and stared at Nick, looking intimidated. I held up a hand. “Okay, Nick, let’s not jump to conclusions. Cody was pissed, but that doesn’t mean anything. I think it’s more important that we all agree to work together, and to cooperate with the police, so that whoever actually did it is brought to justice. This is not a joke, guys. It’s not an exaggeration or a romantic call to arms—this is real life, and someone is going to prison. The cops may not have ruled Wes’s death a murder yet, but it looks really bad. I need you guys to tell me what your game was last night. In as much detail as you can manage.”