No Saving Throw Page 7

  Thinking he wanted to say something about Wes or the group’s sadness, I nodded, rather touched. He beckoned, and the LARPers gathered around us in a huddle.

  “Remember, everyone, that it’s going to be more important today than ever to stay in character,” he said. I blinked, puzzled, and he continued. “We’re retracing our steps from the other night, yes, but we all need to think of ourselves as detectives today, too, especially if we’re going to get any answers. Try to see everything you saw the other night, but look at it with fresh eyes. Consider Wes’s perspective. Consider a murderer’s perspective. Keep your long-term goals in mind, but stay focused on the short-term. Don’t make any assumptions about what we know or think we know—remember, you can only see what your character sees. In this case, try to see what an investigator would see. We need to question each other, too, so, just like any time we play, try not to take anything we do today personally.”

  The others all nodded solemnly, as if this was a familiar pep talk. I felt my jaw drop a little at the sheer madness José was spouting, and I looked at Jordan, standing behind the rest of the group. She rolled her eyes and gave me a “What did you expect?” shrug.

  I sighed. “Yes. Well. Uh, thanks José.”

  He nodded importantly. “This is where we met for the evening.”

  “Not at the store?”

  José shook his head—the group seemed to have elected him leader in Paige’s absence. “The lobby is more central.”

  “Okay. What then?”

  He walked me through their assignments. It seemed Nick, Wes, and Paige had vanished immediately for one of the upper levels while José and Olivia, the semi-neutral and undecided parties in their vampire politicking, had remained in the lobby for at least half an hour, putting us at about seven thirty.

  Presumably, only Nick and Paige knew where Wes had been during that time.

  The next confirmed Wes sighting by someone in the troupe other than Nick and Paige had been Olivia, crossing paths with him on the third floor at around seven forty-five. “What did you say to him?” José asked her.

  Olivia folded her arms over her chest. “I asked him whether or not he was helping Alaria and Kelvin overthrow the queen.”

  In response to the question he read on my face, José said, “That’s Paige and Nick.”

  “Ah.”

  “Yesterday you said you were interrogating him. What exactly did you do?”

  Olivia lifted her chin. She had long, dark hair that spilled down her back when she moved. With her deep purple eye shadow and silver choker, she almost looked the part of the vampire queen herself. “I cornered him against the railing. But I never touched him, and when he said ‘pause,’ I let him go. He said he needed to use the bathroom.” She made a disgusted huffing noise, as if interrupting a fictional interrogation for real life necessities showed great weakness in the line of fire. “He took the stairs, and that’s the last time I saw him.”

  José loomed over her, bad cop stats maxing out like he’d rolled a ten on intimidate. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you didn’t use force—didn’t threaten him with your fangs, or talk about feeding on him?”

  This took Olivia aback. “Well, I—”

  “You did, didn’t you?”

  “We always threaten force, that’s how this game works!” Olivia was near tears.

  “Did you threaten to bite him?”

  “Yes, I did, okay! But you know I would never do anything to hurt someone in real life. Wes was upset, so I let him go!” Olivia took a step back toward the railing, cornered and upset.

  “Easy, José,” I said. “Come on.”

  He gave me a hard look. “We’ve got to ask the tough questions, Autumn, and if you’re not willing to do it, I will.”

  Shocked, I raised my voice. “Why are you acting like this? Who appointed you investigator, anyway?” José was normally a sweet, quiet guy, and this was a side of him I’d never seen.

  “Cut, I think,” Jordan said.

  I blinked, puzzled by the non sequitur.

  José froze. “I’m sorry,” he said, uncertain.

  I looked at Jordan. “Cut?”

  She grinned. “It’s a safe word in LARPing. Remember? We used it in our Shadowrun days.”

  It all came rushing back to me. “Oh my god, you’re right.” I turned back to José. “What the hell?”

  He shrugged. “My character has the highest investigate skill level. I have practice. The others thought I should take point.”

  I glanced at Olivia, and she nodded. I did an actual, real-life facepalm, groaning. “You were seriously . . . role-playing . . . the last twenty minutes when you were walking me through all of this?”

  “You know how it is, Autumn. You used to do this stuff.” His voice, so cool and hard all afternoon, was suddenly soft and shaky.

  That shut me up. He and the others were frightened, grieving. I had asked them to come back to the site of their trauma and reenact the final hours, the final minutes, of their friend’s life. Role-playing was a safe space, and José wasn’t just pretending to be an investigator—he was pretending to be an earlier, innocent version of himself, even as he was forcing himself to look at his play and his friends with the jaded eye of his critics. My reputation wasn’t the only one on the line.

  “I am so, so sorry, you guys. I didn’t think this through.”

  “We want to help,” Olivia said in a small voice.

  “I know you do. But I think maybe we should focus on talking to the people in the stores. The only ones who know where Nick and Paige were are Nick and Paige.”

  “Maybe the others found out something about Cody,” José said hopefully.

  “Maybe so. Let’s find them.”

  I led the way to the stairs, Jordan at my side. She didn’t say anything, and I knew the words, “I told you so,” would never cross her lips, but she had been right to disapprove. Pretending we knew what we were doing, that we would find something the trained professionals had missed, made a mockery of Wes’s death. And if Paige and Nick had killed him, we were doing a disservice to his memory. My jaw clenched, the beginnings of a headache threatening to clobber me. I knew I’d have a migraine before the end of the day.

  Our “investigation” concluded, we waited on the others back in the lobby, where Paige and Wes had argued. She was the last person to admit to seeing him Friday night, a little after eight. After that, his time was a mystery.

  I sauntered over to Max while we waited. “Hey, Max. How’s it hanging?”

  “Oh, fine, young lady, just fine.” He put down his newspaper.

  “How’s that retirement plan of yours coming?” I asked. Might as well butter him up a little. I slathered on the small-town sweetness.

  He beamed at me. “You remembered! Pretty well, thanks. I’m looking at some new investments. I think the missus and me may be able to hang it up for good pretty soon.”

  “Oh, come on—you know you’ll never stop working,” I teased. It was true. The man loved his job.

  He waved me off. “None of that. I’m thinking I’m just about ready to start taking it a little easier.”

  “We’d be lost without you,” I said. I leaned on his counter. “You practically run this building.”

  “You’re not wrong.” He gave me an old-man wink.

  I cringed but kept smiling. “Speaking of, that boy who died—you saw him Friday night?” My voice echoed in the too-quiet lobby.

  Max nodded. “Yeah. I just wish I’d been at my desk when it happened. I was down the hall—someone said they heard arguing in one of the shops.”

  My ears perked up. “Down the hall on this floor?” That’s where Meghan’s shop was, down the hall and at the corner of the building, right on the main street of the square.

  “Yep. Nina from the gift shop heard a man and a woman shouting at each other, a real dust-up. She told me as she was leaving for the n
ight. But when I got over there, they’d split. All the shops were dark, no one there.”

  “Odd.”

  “Yep.”

  “Did you happen to see another guy around, with a shaved head like a cartoon thug? He might have seemed cranky.” I described Cody the best I could. Max’s eyes lit up. “Yeah, him. He was lurking around, real suspicious, around twenty after eight or so. I told him to move on, and he said he was waiting for someone. Eventually he went back upstairs, to your store, I guess. I went upstairs right after, around eight thirty or so, just after Mr. Wolcott and Mr. MacLeod left.”

  That didn’t help at all, except to confirm that Cody had been in the building when Wes was still alive. And apparently he’d been in the lobby when Paige and Wes were fighting. Damn. But I knew now that Craig had left with Donald, not Meghan. That was interesting.

  I wondered if Nina from the gift shop had heard Paige and Wes arguing, or if she’d inadvertently witnessed someone else’s fight. Meghan had still been here then. But for all I knew, Nina could have heard any pair of the LARPers having an in-character confrontation.

  When I turned from Max, the role players who had been interviewing the shopkeepers had appeared, a beaming Hector in tow. I glowered at him.

  “You’re supposed to be in the shop.”

  “I put the back in ten sign up—you’ll want to hear this,” he said. He made a come-closer motion, and the whole seven-person gang leaned in like we were having a pregame huddle.

  “We just heard from Nina in the gift shop that Meghan and her boyfriend were arguing the night of the murder.”

  “Meghan and Craig?” I said, shocked. Jordan and I looked at each other, her surprised face a reflection of mine. “Did she hear what they were fighting about?”

  “Apparently, she was trying to get Craig on board with something. Saying things like, ‘Can’t you see it’s in my best interest?’ and, ‘You never think about what I want.’”

  “Good gossip, but it doesn’t sound like it’s useful to us,” Jordan said.

  “No, but listen—apparently Craig said something like, ‘You make it very clear that you’d do anything to protect your own interests,’ and then he stormed off. Nina saw Meghan in her store alone when she—Nina—left, around eight twenty-five. She said Meghan looked pissed.”

  Understandably. Meghan would do anything to protect her own interests, but pointing that out to her seemed to be the height of bad behavior. This explained why Craig had left with Donald. “So we know Meghan was around and in a bad mood.”

  “Here’s the thing, though,” Hector said, still looking excited. “We think Wes may have heard what they were arguing about. Nina said she saw him in the stairwell, going up right after the argument. Like he’d been on their floor the whole time.”

  “She didn’t see Wes listening with her own two eyes?” Jordan asked. “It’s hearsay at best.”

  “But we only have to prove that Nick and Paige might not be guilty, right? Not that they’re actually, uh, you know.” Hector trailed off, uncomfortable.

  “It’s not a good sign that you’re finding it harder to prove they could be innocent than the prosecutor would find it to prove them guilty,” Jordan said.

  “You have to admit that there’s some wiggle room,” Hector said defensively.

  José chimed in. “I wonder if anyone talked to that woman’s boyfriend—Craig, right?”

  I looked at Jordan. She shook her head. “If they have, I don’t know about it. I’ll tell them—”

  “No, wait,” I said. “I want to talk to him first.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Jordan said.

  “I’ll keep it casual. I’ll just drop by, ask him how Meghan’s doing, the usual. She’s here today. I could go by his house no problem. We’re friends, right?”

  Jordan studied my face. “You’re insane,” she said finally.

  I shrugged. “I never claimed otherwise.” With that, I turned back to the gamers. “Great work, team,” I said. “Let’s break for now. If you guys want to keep working, you could draw up a map and timeline of Friday night. Otherwise, I say go home and take a break. You’ve had a rough weekend.”

  We split, Hector and me walking back to the store through the mall. He practically pranced up the stairs, he was so pleased with himself. “I’ll bet you twenty bucks we could get the cops to think it was Meghan,” he said. “She’s nuts, I tell you. Remember that time she yelled at us for standing in costume outside her door? She said we were scaring off customers. I could totally see her offing Wes just for getting a glimpse of her life being less than perfect. And it’d be convenient for her, too, wouldn’t it? She’s the one who’s getting Donald to ask you to drop out of the grant competition because of the bad publicity. Psycho prom queen puppet master probably engineered the whole thing. I bet you anything that’s what’s happening.”

  I pondered his words. Meghan made Cordelia Chase look easygoing, and she was ambitious on top of that. But would she kill to protect her reputation? Or even to get the grant she so desperately wanted? I doubted it. However, I could definitely see her capitalizing on Wes’s death, making the most of a convenient situation and trying to drive me under using the weight of my own troubles. Hector was wrong: she wasn’t a psychopath, but she always struck me as a sociopath. Normal people just weren’t so—unflappable. She was more of an android than a woman.

  We stopped at the door while Hector unlocked it, still chattering about Meghan’s possible motives. He fumbled with the lock, then flung the door open in his excitement. The cardboard “back in ten minutes” sign flapped in the door’s wake, and something fluttered to the floor.

  I bent to pick it up. It was another Spellcasters card, the Undead Samurai. The face had been scratched off.

  “What’s that?” Hector asked, seeing me studying it.

  I showed him. “There was another one outside. I guess someone is leaving them for Wes? I’ll put it with the others.”

  Hector looked down at it. “Creepy,” he said, echoing my earlier thought.

  Creepy was right. I pocketed it. One disturbing memorial token was enough.

  8

  WHEN I KNOCKED ON Craig’s front door early that evening, it occurred to me, too late, that there was a good chance he and Meghan were living together by now. I stared in horror at my knuckles as if I could undo their rapping. But Craig answered the door, and I was released from my need to bend the laws of reality.

  “Hey, Autumn,” he said, his voice both sorrowful and warm. He had a towel in his hands, as if he’d been drying dishes, and he stuffed it into his back pocket when he saw me. He reached out to draw me into the house, hugging me in the process. I let him do it, hoping to butter him up a little. “I heard, and I wanted to call, but I thought you must be so swamped.”

  I followed him down his short hallway into the little kitchen. There was no evidence of female occupation. The kitchen was stark, utilitarian, no dishes out, cold and sterile as a Cylon warship. There was a paintbrush in the drying rack, a sealed can of paint on the counter. It was too clean, full of chrome appliances and shining tile, utterly unlike my own house. Craig lived in one of the new developments on the south side of town, where all the houses looked so prim and similar, they might as well have been stamped from a mold. My own house was a little bungalow not far from downtown and the store, a quirky place with arched doorways and slightly uneven wood floors.

  At times, it was surreal that the boy I used to make out with outside of homeroom owned a house and washed his own dishes, painted his deck, mowed his lawn. Craig and I had reconnected after I’d finished graduate school and moved back to White Lake. By then, he’d been well established at his real estate agency, successful, prosperous, and more handsome than ever, but we’d managed to rebuild our old friendship.

  At thirty-three, I should probably feel less bitterness about the end of a high school relationship. Everything had worked out. After that horrible sum
mer, when Meghan slept with Craig while I was off visiting my mom, I went to UW-Madison, graduated with honors, got my MBA, and came back to open Ten Again. Craig and I stayed friends, and when Meghan returned to White Lake to open Chic, she and I had settled into an amicable mutual dislike, fueled at a distance.

  Sometimes it irked me that they’d managed to turn their fling into a long-term relationship while I’d never managed to keep a boyfriend for more than six months. Not that I was complaining. Somehow, every boyfriend I’d had since Craig—including Craig—managed to disappoint. It always seemed better to just date casually, have fun, and call it quits before things got complicated. Love ’em and leave ’em, Jordan said.

  Well, most of them I left.

  “Thanks, Craig,” I said when he pulled out one of the kitchen chairs for me. I sank into it, dropping my bag onto the floor. “It’s been a nightmare.”

  “I couldn’t believe it when I read the paper.” He stood at the sink, rinsing out a plain stainless steel teakettle and then filling it from the tap. “And now they’re saying it’s a murder—it’s too horrible. Those poor kids.”

  “You remember when we used to LARP?”

  “Yeah.” He flashed me a white grin. “You and me and Jordan. And Micah. And who was that guy . . . Man, I’m getting old. I can’t remember his name!”

  “Stuart,” I said. “His name was Stuart. He moved away after junior year.”

  “Right! Man.” Craig put the kettle on and lit the burner. “Seems like ages ago.”

  “Yeah.” I wondered, as a stiff silence fell, how to bring the conversation around to his fight with Meghan. “Mostly I feel bad for the players. They’re all in their twenties, and they were all pretty close. What a shock.”

  “I can’t even imagine,” Craig agreed. He took a pair of mugs from the cabinet, then leaned against the counter with his arms crossed.

  “It must have been pretty awful for Meghan, too.” I lowered my eyelids, hoping to seem casual.

  “Yeah.” I felt him studying me. “She was horrified. She felt guilty, I think, for not being able to do anything.”