Spooked

Chapter 4 - Kimberly

CHAPTER 4 - KIMBERLY

GEORGETTE RILEY.

I searched for her on the internet while the locksmith ran up a massive bill. Front door, back door, garage—all of those keys had been in my purse. I’d spent last night on edge with my new phone in my hand, listening for anybody creeping around outside. The only good thing about an otherwise horrible day was the realisation that I’d left my car key in the office when I hitched a ride to the Park Plaza with Annie.

Georgette Riley had been a twenty-four-year-old retail assistant working at the make-up counter at JCPenney in Arlington before her disappearance two years ago. The last time anyone saw her alive, she’d been heading for the dance floor in Club Riviera, tipsy but not drunk according to the friends she’d been with. One girl thought she’d glimpsed Georgette later, dancing with a dark-haired man, but she couldn’t be sure and he’d never come forward. The only certainty was that when the club closed at three o’clock in the morning, Georgette hadn’t been in the building.

Her boyfriend at the time swore she hadn’t come home, but several neighbours in their apartment building said they’d heard yelling earlier in the evening, and he admitted they’d had a fight before she went out. That the only reason she’d gone clubbing in the first place was a stupid argument over pizza toppings. Volatile, he’d called her. Flighty.

As Officer Leopold had said, the boyfriend had been the main suspect, although ultimately, the case fizzled out like a damp squib because with no body, foul play couldn’t be proven. A small follow-up article a year later noted that Georgette had never contacted anyone, not even her parents or brother, and her bank account remained untouched.

Missing presumed dead.

Except for me, there was no “presumed” about it. I knew Georgette was dead, her life snuffed out in the back of a luxury car driven by a lethal Casanova.

I leaned back in my leather desk chair, hidden safely away from prying eyes in my home office. When Annie had offered to take my meetings this morning, I’d gratefully accepted, partly so I could catch up on sleep—which hadn’t happened—but mostly so I could research Georgette in peace. That poor girl. How had she crossed paths with Tim or whatever his real name was?

Had he bought her a drink the way he did with me? Or offered her a lift home? Or had she genuinely liked the man, only for him to turn on her in the worst possible way? I’d never find out unless I could talk to her again, and I didn’t have the first clue how to track down a dead woman. I was a wedding planner, not a detective. All I could do was hope the cops came up with a suspect.

Kayla gave me a sympathetic look when I shuffled into the office at lunchtime—a small, hesitant smile and apologetic gaze even though she had nothing to be sorry for. No, last night’s events had been totally my fault. Annie had obviously filled her in on what happened, including how utterly stupid I’d been.

“Can I get you a coffee? Hot chocolate? Green tea? Fruit juice? Or a muffin? Some lunch?”

“I ate before I left home. Sorry, I should have stopped at Starbucks on the way.”

“It’s fine, honestly. I already had two lattes today.” She paused, eyes searching my face. “How are you? Annie told me about… You know.”

“You know me—I always bounce back.”

At least on the surface. Inside, I’d been bottling up all my anger and fear and frustration for years. Anger that my parents had let me down. Fear that I’d be alone for the rest of my days with my strange gift. Frustration that I couldn’t lead a normal life.

“Do you want a distraction? I need to find a pair of pure-white Falabella horses.”

“Fala-what?”

“Like pygmy ponies.”

Uh-oh. I had a bad feeling about this. “Marnie Blake?”

Kayla nodded and grimaced at the same time.

“I thought we were going with dogs?”

“Turns out that Marnie’s fiancé got bitten by a shih-tzu when he was six, and he’s been terrified of dogs ever since. Apparently he’s got a scar and everything.”

“So she wants ponies? Can they carry flowers? What happens if one of them poops in the aisle?”

“I guess we also need to order a shovel.”

See? My life was a freaking disaster.

***

And the disaster only got more disastrous after lunch on Wednesday. One day since I’d woken up in the hospital, and I was trying to stay positive. At least I’d gotten plenty of exercise with the four trips I’d already made to Starbucks, even if the caffeine hadn’t made a dent in my tiredness. Turned out getting drugged and nearly murdered plays havoc with a girl’s sleep patterns.

“Kim, you’ve got a visitor.” Kayla poked her head around my office door. She sat out front at the reception desk while I shared a room with Annie. We also had the meeting area for clients, a tiny kitchenette with a bathroom to the side, and a storage closet stuffed with everything from emergency shoes to superglue. “He’s a cop.”

Officer Leopold? I put down the dragon I was busy building out of paper clips and hurried out to meet him, only to stop short because this definitely wasn’t the same policeman who’d visited me in the hospital. No, this guy was thirty-ish with dark-blond hair, a strong jaw, and eyes the colour of my ex-husband’s expensive cognac.

He held out a hand and flashed a smile. “Sergeant Wyatt Banks.”

I longed to wipe my sweaty palm on my skirt, but that would have been worse than just shaking his hand.

“Kimberly Jennings.”

“Have you got a moment? It’s to do with the incident the other night.”

Well, what else would it be about? I always stuck to the speed limits, I never got parking tickets, and I’d only ever killed one person but that was years ago and a total accident.

Joey Dean.

I didn’t even feel guilty about his death. Well, not after I got over my initial shock and thought rationally. Joey Dean had been a murderer. He’d pushed his girlfriend down the stairs in my freaking house, then claimed it was an accident and gotten away with it. How did I know that? Because Tiffany had whined about it every damn morning when I came down for breakfast.

Yes, yes, I know I shouldn’t have bought a house with ghosts in it, but it only had two, and it was a foreclosure so I got a really good deal. And do you have any idea how difficult it is to find a place without spirits? The murdered hung around for years. Centuries even. At least Tiffany’s and Margaret’s deaths were relatively recent, so they understood modern life and we could have a relatively pleasant conversation. I’d toured one property with three native Americans standing semi-naked in the kitchen, and they just yelled non-stop in a language I couldn’t understand. I got the gist of it from their waved gestures—do your duty, slacker—but in their case, it was impossible, even if I’d been willing.

As a member of the Electi, I’d been put on earth to get justice for those killed by another. Their souls got trapped, tethered to the spot where they died or sometimes an item like a car or bus or airplane if it was big enough, as if their cosmic energy or whatever made up their essence somehow became intertwined with that of the object they’d died closest to. Those who died of natural causes or self-inflicted accidents passed straight over to the other side for recycling.

Why were some souls stuck? Well, because they were supposed to assist me and my fellow Electi. Our job was to track down the murderers and dispatch their black souls into oblivion, thereby freeing the tethered. If we didn’t, the criminals got reincarnated while their poor victims hung around in limbo forever.

The trouble was, whoever created us hadn’t banked on pesky things like laws and prisons, so I couldn’t just go around killing people even if I’d wanted to. Which I didn’t. Not only did I hate the sight of blood, I just wasn’t cut out to be a deadly avenger. I liked Netflix and chill, not high kicks and kill.

Apart from Joey Dean, obviously.

But Sergeant Wyatt Banks didn’t know that, so I pasted on a smile and invited him through to my office.

“Kayla, would you mind picking up a couple of Americanos—”

Banks cut in. “I won’t be staying long.”

“Don’t worry, they’re both for me.” I turned back to Kayla. “Plus anything Sergeant Banks would like.”

She grinned at him. “An espresso, perhaps? Since you’re in a hurry.”

“Okay, you’ve persuaded me.”

In my office, I waved Banks into one of the visitors’ chairs opposite my desk, where he looked a little uncomfortable amongst all the flowers and silver accents. I worked long hours and I wanted to feel at home, so I surrounded myself with lace and candles and delicate floral scents in an attempt to distract myself from the darker side of my life. Plus the brides-to-be loved it.

“Do you have any news?” I asked. He wouldn’t have come otherwise, would he?

“Yes, but I’m afraid it’s not what you want to hear.”

“What do you mean?”

I grabbed a handful of paper clips out of habit and began twisting one. I’d started doing it as a child, a nervous reaction whenever my parents started arguing. As an adult, I’d tried progressing to copper wire and pliers in order to make jewellery, but in times of stress, paper clips were always my go-to.

“I double-checked your toxicology results, but the tests definitely didn’t find anything apart from alcohol.”

“What? How can that be? I’ve never felt all woozy like that before. Never!”

“I believe you. But these substances don’t always show up. We can usually detect Rohypnol for twenty-four hours, depending on the dosage, but other drugs leave the body soon after you regain consciousness. GHB’s another common one, but it occurs naturally in the central nervous system, and detecting an elevated level is something the hospital lab just can’t handle.”

“Then find someone who can handle it!”

“It’s just not that straightforward, I’m afraid. A sophisticated forensic analysis in a case like this isn’t in the department’s budget.”

“Money? You refuse to follow up because of money?”

“Not only money. I visited the hotel where you claim you met the man, and I couldn’t find anybody who saw you with him.”

“But the security cameras… What about the security cameras?”

“There weren’t any.”

“No way. The sign behind the desk specifically said there were.”

“Yeah, I saw that too.” Banks shrugged, apologetic it seemed. “I spoke to the manager, and the whole system malfunctioned last year. Something about a bug in the software update. It was out of warranty, so rather than fix it, they just put a big sign up telling people they were being recorded, and it’s actually been more effective than having cameras in the first place.”

“So there’s nothing?”

“No video, no forensic evidence, no witnesses.” Another shrug. “I talked with the assistant state’s attorney, and he said there’s no way they’d get a conviction, even if we did manage to track the guy down.”

“Then that’s it? You just give up? What happens if he does this again? Or worse? What happens if he murders someone?”

Like poor Georgette.

“Sorry. Believe me, I want to get men like that off the streets as much as you, but there’s nothing more I can do at the moment.”

“What if I paid for the extra tests?”

Might as well use Daddy’s money for something useful. After all, I had plenty of it since he dished it out in lieu of love, time, or you know, actually being a father.

“You could do that, but even if one of them came back positive, we’d still have to find the perpetrator and prove he gave you the drug. Difficult with no witnesses. If we caught him with GHB, that would just be simple possession.”

“What’s the penalty for that?”

“Up to a year in prison or a thousand-dollar fine.”

“A fine? He tried to kidnap me, and he’d get a fine?”

Banks held up both hands. “Hey, I’m on your side. I don’t make the laws. Do you want me to ask the lab to keep ahold of the sample?”

He glanced at his watch. No, he may not make the laws, but he certainly had a hand in not enforcing them properly. Even if I somehow proved I’d been drugged, it was clear the case wouldn’t be a priority.

“I guess. Can I think about the extra tests?”

“Sure. Here’s my card. If you have any questions or remember something new, give me a call.”

“I don’t suppose anyone found my purse?”

“Nobody handed it in at the hotel.”

Perhaps my usual approach of sticking my head in the sand was the right one. Over the years, I’d become deaf to the cries of the dead, aided in no small part by the expensive noise-cancelling headphones I wore whenever I went out for a walk alone. Georgette’s was just one more voice among thousands.

But right now, it was louder than all the others put together.

Banks inched towards the door. “Unless there’s anything else…”

“No, no. You go. I’ve got your card.”

And his espresso too, seeing as Kayla returned half a minute after he left. I sipped it while pondering my latest dilemma. What, if anything, should I do next?