29. Back to Murder

Ifollowed her gaze. "That's my Uncle Bracken. I mean, yes, he's a crazy-looking old guy, but he's also my uncle."

Hopping up, I slipped into my shoes and met him at the door. "Hi. I'm just talking with a couple of detectives. Would you like to come in and meet them?" He shook his head and turned back in the direction of his RV. "I wanted you to know that a strange man was lurking, staring in the gallery windows and trying the back door."

Stiffening, I looked left and right. Was it the sweaty man who'd been parked in front waiting for me or a new one?

He patted my arm. "I got rid of him. I didn't like the look of him. I think he was like the man who'd cornered you as a child."

Unfortunately, I thought so too. "Thank you. I appreciate you keeping an eye out for me."

Nodding, he went back toward his RV. "I liked the muffin."

Good. I should make quiches later today. He needed protein. And I needed eggs. As I composed a shopping list in my head, I went back in to find the detectives gone.

"Hello?"

"We're in your gallery," Hernández called. When I walked in, she asked, "Everything good?"

"Creep, possible stalker. My uncle got rid of him for me."

Osso gave me a look. "Permanently?"

I rolled my eyes. "He's a historian, not a hit man. He just gave the guy a magical shove."

"Why do you say he's a stalker?" Hernández asked, expression concerned.

"I've had to do the same kind of magical shove a couple of times. He's fixated. I can feel it. Declan even gave him a big, scary wolf glare and it didn't register at all. I'm deciding how to deal with it."

"You could make a report with us," she said.

Osso shook his head. "What are we going to do that she can't do better and faster?"

"But." Hernández was at a loss.

Her fear for me was palpable and it warmed my heart. I patted her elbow. "I'll be okay. I've had to deal with creeps my whole life."

Osso grunted, apparently agreeing with Declan's anger. He shook it off and then studied the walls. "I know you're busy here, but can you come with us?"

I sighed. "Why?"

"Dead man. Luis Garza. He fell or was pushed off a cliff onto rocks, just like in your vision. We probably wouldn't have found him, but a sailboat saw him and called it in before the tide washed him away. I want to take you to the estate. It's on 17-Mile Drive."

"That's Carmel," I said. "Isn't that a different police force?"

He nodded. "It is, but we cooperate. They agreed to give us the case because Luis Garza used to be the groundskeeper at Cypress Academy. That means this death wraps into our cases. Garza was fired or quit—we'll find out—five years ago."

"Five years, huh?" I stuffed my hands in my overall pockets. I had work. The problem was, I also had nightmares about this.

"Yeah. We're wondering if it had anything to do with a couple of former students," Hernández said.

I headed back to the studio. "Let me get my backpack."

On the drive, I sat in the back seat and texted Dave.

Me: Do demons write grimoires?

Dave: Not as a rule but a few exist.

Me: I had a vision about Calliope using one, building a spell. I couldn't read the words on the page. Just looking at them made my head pound and my stomach want to hurl. I wondered if it might be a demonic language

Dave: That's an interesting idea. Let me see if I can find out who the original Corey symbiot was. If I don't know the demon, my father will. That would explain a lot and it might make her easier to find.

Me: How?

Dave: If the grimoire is demon made and we know who the demon is, I might be able to locate it. MIGHT. Let me look into it.

Me: Great. Thank you!

Dave: Yeah and Maggie says thanks for the hedgehog.

Osso badged his way through the gate at the entrance to the 17-Mile Drive. The road led through some of the most beautiful properties in Carmel and Pacific Grove. It hugged the ocean and included Pebble Beach, the Lone Cypress, huge mansions, the Del Monte Forest.

"Why was a former groundskeeper on an estate around here?" I asked.

"We had the same question," Hernández said. "Turns out the couple that owns the place, the Masons, have a kid who went to Cypress Academy."

"Interesting," I said.

"We thought so too. The owners are in Europe and told us their son lives in New York now. He went to Harvard and works in finance. We'll check his whereabouts, but we doubt he's taking a red-eye back and forth across the country to kill people from his old school. From what Mom says, he loved Cypress. We haven't been able to reach him yet."

"Very important meetings," Osso sneered.

"Yes," Hernández confirmed, "but the secretary says he's there. We'll reach out to the local PD and see if they can check for us."

"So was Garza working as their groundskeeper?" I asked.

"No. He has his own landscaping business now. Had. It's quite successful. But, Mom did let it slip that junior liked to throw end-of-year parties at their estate when they were away."

"Meaning," Osso cut in, "all of his classmates would be familiar with the estate and that his parents went to Europe every year around this time."

"If they'd been invited," I said.

Hernández turned around to look at me.

"I doubt he invited everyone. This wasn't a kindergarten birthday party. If the murderers felt comfortable enough to use it to kill Garza, they'd probably at least attended the parties, meaning they were part of the popular crowd or—"

"Had a grudge against the kid and wanted to cause some trouble," Osso finished.

I nodded. "Exactly."

"We were thinking friend," Hernández said, "but maybe enemy. These two probably knew how to hang with the crowd. The Masons' son"—she checked her notes—"Edmund might not have even known they hated him. Your cousin thought he was charming, right?"

"Yeah. She did." It was so much easier thinking of these two in the abstract. When I had to consider Pearl's death, her mother's grief, it hollowed me out.

The car went silent and then Hernández said, "Sorry. That was thoughtless of me."

"No. You're working. This is what you need to do to figure out who the killers are. Do what you do. I'm fine."

Osso turned off the 17-Mile Drive, which was always slow with tourists stopping to take pics. He used back roads to get us to the Masons' seaside estate. There was a tall, wrought iron fence at a break in a high stone wall. You couldn't see the house through the bars of the gate. The narrow drive curved out of sight, hiding the estate from random sightseers.

Osso got out and punched in a security code on a keypad to the left of the gate. When the gate rumbled open, he got back in and drove through a grove of trees before the road opened to a rolling lawn leading to a French Provincial mansion. The trees seemed to surround the entire estate. It went on so far, though, it was hard to tell for sure.

"Stables? Am I seeing horse stables way back there?" I asked.

"Sure looks like it," Hernández said.

"I wonder who takes care of the horses when the family's away," I said. "I mean, who's mowing this perfectly manicured lawn? There must be tons of people with that code to get in here and maintain this place."

"Yeah," Osso said. "Hernández has a list of—what—almost twenty service people who come to the estate regularly. The housecleaning service comes twice a week, regardless of whether the family is home." He shook his head. "Something about dust and musty smells. I don't know. Rich people problems."

"Okay, so are we sure—" I stopped. What the hell was I doing? I wasn't a detective. Why was I acting like I was on their investigative team?

Osso looked at me in the rearview mirror as he pulled to a stop in front of the main house. "What?"

"Sorry. I'm not a cop."

Hernández got out and opened the back door for me. "It's okay. Most of your questions we've already asked ourselves and have done the digging, but not all. Sometimes you bring up ideas I hadn't considered."

I grabbed my backpack.

"Besides," Osso said, "you do all this for free. We can put up with questions and theories for free psychic insight."

"Okay. I'll finish the thought. Do any of those service employees or their families have ties to Cypress Academy? Like the women we met, Isabel and Sofia. They've been at the school a long time, but I'm sure others had a hard time and left and now maybe work for the company that cleans here."

"You're losing the thread," Osso said as he led us toward the cliff at the edge of the property. "The killers aren't a couple of disgruntled cleaning ladies. You said we're looking for young men, previous students of Cypress, right?"

"Good point." I followed in his wake.

"You're not wrong, though," Hernández said. "That is what we check. Maybe one of them has a nephew who's brilliant and got a scholarship to attend. Lots of possibilities."

Osso snorted a laugh. "You really see these people inviting the little Latino charity case to their millionaire parties?"

"Depends," I said, and Hernández nodded. "If the scholarship kid was a star at the school or just friends with this couple's son, yeah, he'd be invited."

"This isn't a school that accepts a bunch of poor kids who work hard. We checked. There are only one or two scholarships given every year. Maybe I'm jaded, but I'd guess those scholarship kids are treated like the help by the rest of the students." He stopped at the edge of the lawn.

"Huh," I said. "I would have thought they'd at least put up one of those short corral fences, so people didn't accidentally walk over a cliff to their death." We all walked to the edge and looked over. The water barely broke over the rocks. I checked the time on my phone. "Low tide."

Osso nodded. "If Garza went over at high tide, the killer may have thought the body would be washed out to sea."

"Body gets caught on the rocks, ebb tide, and sailboat passes," I said.

"We were lucky," Hernández agreed. "The coroner says his death was last night. If the tide hadn't been receding, we might not have found the body for weeks."

"If at all," Osso said.

"Are we sure this is where he went over?"

Osso shook his head.

"Okay." I handed my backpack to Hernández. "You two move back. Let me wander around a bit."