Grave Reservations by Cherie Priest

14.

Leda and Niki sat on the curb in front of the travel agency office, where Leda had just sent forth several rounds of advertising through all her favorite social media sites—and one fairly extensive post on Craigslist, just to cover her bases. For the sake of the business, she’d also created a Twitter account (though she was still waiting on her fancy-pants blue check mark of officialness), a Facebook page, and an Instagram account where she posted pictures that her most recent clients had sent her from their cruise. So far. There would be more pictures to come, she was sure of it.

The ladies rose to their feet when Grady Merritt’s car crawled around the corner and stopped in front of them.

“Shotgun!” shouted Niki.

Leda tried to hip-check her friend out of the way, but she wasn’t fast enough. “No fair!”

“You know the rules. Tallest person gets shotgun.”

“You’re barely an inch taller, and most of that’s because of the plastic boot.”

“Devil’s in the details,” Niki declared, popping the latch and throwing herself inside. “Hey there, Detective!”

He looked at her with muted surprise. “Hey there… Nicole. So you’re coming along, too?”

“It’s Niki. You said it was okay.”

“I did?”

“Back when you first came to the travel agency, that one time. I’m pretty sure.” She found the seat belt and buckled herself in, just as Leda was scooting into the back seat.

Looking over his shoulder, he said, “Hey, Leda. You didn’t mention—”

“I know, but you said it was okay.”

“I guess I… did?” He gave in, since possession was nine-tenths of the law and now these two women each possessed a seat inside his car. When Leda’s seat belt was fastened, he sighed, looked forward, and took the wheel with both hands. “Okay, then. So it’s a party. I hope he doesn’t mind.”

“Who are we visiting again?” Niki asked.

Leda leaned forward as far as she could, so she hovered over the gear shift, right between their heads. “Abbot Keyes. Supposedly, he got into a fight with one of the murder victims a couple of days before all the killing. Right?” she asked Grady.

“Right. He’s agreed to meet us at the university between classes. Well, he agreed to meet me and Leda.” He shot one more look at Niki. “I’m sure it’ll be fine, though.”

“Obviously it’ll be fine. Tell him I’m a detective-in-training or something.”

“I’m not going to tell him that. I’ll think of something else. How’s your foot?”

“Healing by the day!” Niki declared brightly, wiggling it around on the floor—where it rattled and thumped.

Leda said, right into the side of Grady’s face, “Tell him she’s a forensic accountant. Or a roving lab tech. Or a crime scene investigator!”

He pulled out into the flow of traffic and didn’t look at either one of them. “I’m not going to tell him that. For one thing, we’re not visiting a crime scene. For another, roving lab tech? That’s not a job.”

“I could be a pirate?”

“Maybe stop talking,” he suggested. “I’ll think of something when we get there.”

“Why are we going to the university?” Leda asked.

Somewhat wearily, he said, “Because that’s where Abbot Keyes is.”

“Why?” asked Niki. “Is he a student there?”

“Yes. He’s working on a computer science degree when he’s not roaming King County as an Uber driver.”

Leda sat back. “So I guess the consulting gig didn’t shake out?”

“Digital Scaffolding folded after Christopher and Kevin died,” Grady informed them. “Either Keyes couldn’t land another consulting gig, or he simply chose not to. You can ask him when we meet him. Wait—on second thought, no. Neither one of you should ask him anything. I will do all the talking.”

“You will do all the talking,” Leda and Niki said in unison.

Grady frowned, but he was too far along in these shenanigans to bail now. “I do the talking,” he repeated. “And if this gets ugly, or heated, or anything like that, this is the first and last time you two get to do a ride-along. Got it?”

“Got it,” they said in sync, though they sounded a bit deflated.

It was late enough in the morning that rush hour was over, but the trip to the U District still took half an hour. They made it onto campus and parked behind the University Book Store—where Abbot had promised he’d meet them in the café area downstairs. True to his word, he was there waiting when the trio came in.

“That’s him,” Grady said under his breath to Leda, his eyes flashing to a white man in his early thirties with tragic dark emo hair and a waistcoat with a pocket watch that said he visited the nineteenth century in his downtime, for funsies.

Leda tried very hard not to squeal with excitement when she whispered, “The Victorian orphan!”

Grady checked her gently with his shoulder. “Yeah, I know—but keep it to yourself.” He took the lead and approached the seated fellow at his table.

Abbot popped a pair of earbuds free, looping the skinny cords around his palm until he could stuff them into his pocket. “Detective Merritt?” he asked, rising to shake hands. “It’s been a while.”

“Good to see you again,” Grady said with a smile. “And thanks so much for taking a few minutes to talk with me. With us.”

Leda and Niki loomed behind him, grinning like maniacs.

“Us?”

“Yes, I’m sorry about the surprise third… fourth wheel,” Grady said as he pulled up a chair and urged his companions to do likewise. There were just enough loose seats to accommodate them all around the small table against the wall. “This is my associate Leda Foley, and this is Nicole Nelson—she’s… a forensic accounting student at Pacific Lutheran. She got assigned to us as a ride-along for class at the last minute, you know how it goes.”

“Sure…” Abbot said, without sounding sure at all. But he mustered a social smile and said, “It’s nice to meet you all. This is something about the Gilmans, right?”

“Correct,” Grady said. “Some new evidence has come up, and we’re making the rounds again—talking to people who worked with them, trying to take another look at the big picture surrounding their deaths.”

“Right, right. Well, whatever I can do to be of help.”

“We do appreciate your cooperation,” Leda said benevolently, and Niki kicked her under the table with her booted foot. Leda was careful not to look at Grady and whatever side-eye he was flashing her. She only smiled bigger.

Grady worked around her. “I have your statements from the last go-round, so I don’t want to make you rehash too much of the same old information.”

“I mean, there’s not very much to rehash, you know?”

Abbot looked confused and a little anxious when he fiddled with his mug of coffee. Was it coffee? On second glance, Leda thought maybe it was chai. Either that, or he’d really loaded up on the creamer.

“I didn’t work for Gilman very long, and I wasn’t around when he died, either.”

“I know, but I wanted to talk about that fight the two of you had, just…” Grady flipped open his notebook and glanced at whatever was written there. “Six days before the murders. We’re taking a broad look at Digital Scaffolding, getting a little more in-depth with regards to the company’s dealings. We’re starting to wonder if Christopher and Kevin weren’t killed over some shady business dealings. Maybe they screwed over the wrong person, or people. Maybe they were making bad deals that hurt someone, or maybe they were taking money from investors.”

Keyes shot a glance at Niki. “That’s what the forensic accountant’s for?”

Grady said, “What?” then caught himself quickly. “Oh, yeah, right. Yes, we’re exploring all possible avenues here.”

Leda leaned forward and asked, “So why don’t you tell us about that fight you two had, shortly before Gilman died?”

“It wasn’t, like, a knockdown, drag-out thing. Nobody threw any punches, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Grady jumped in. “But someone did throw a paperweight through a window.”

“Ah. Well, that’s true. That was me,” Keyes admitted. “I was pretty pissed off. I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone; I was just mad, and it was stupid. I felt stupid about it then, and I feel stupid about it now.”

“At the time, you said the fight was over a bunch of credit card reimbursements that never happened.”

“That’s right. I didn’t love being treated like an errand boy, but that was part of the job, and I did whatever Chris asked me to. But I’d run up all these toll charges, and gas charges, and all that stuff. The guy refused to reimburse me, even when I gave him all my receipts. It was only a few hundred bucks, but come on, you know? It’s not like I was making big money over there, at an entry-level gig in a start-up.”

Leda nodded. “Oh, no kidding. I had a gig like that, and it sucked. Who the hell can live on twenty-two grand a year in Seattle? I mean, come on.” Then to Grady, she added, “There weren’t even any benefits.”

“Bad benefits, bad money, bad everything, got it,” Grady said with a note of finality that suggested everyone except for him and the interviewee needed to back out of the conversation, right freaking now. “But is that all you did there, at Digital Scaffolding? Coffee and dry cleaning?”

“Sometimes I rotated PDFs. Once, I helped Mrs. Gilman scrape ice off her car windows with my ORCA card.”

Niki laughed. “Sounds like a thrill a minute.”

“Yeah, it wasn’t the kind of job that I mourned a whole lot, once it was over.”

Grady jotted something down that Leda didn’t see. “And do you know of anyone else who may have had any difficulties with the work environment? When I asked around last time, there was not a lot of love lost between Christopher Gilman and literally anybody he knew or worked with—which made it tricky to narrow down suspects. But everyone really liked Kevin, and no one can figure out how he got wrapped up in his father’s mess.”

“Kevin was all right—I didn’t have any problem with him.” Keyes agreed. “Nobody did, as far as I know. I assumed that he got caught up in something with his dad, or he showed up at just the wrong time. I don’t think anybody really thought Kevin had anything to do with what happened, but anything’s possible, right?”

Leda let out a laugh that sounded more like a snort. “Anything is definitely possible.”

“We’ve looked into Kevin pretty extensively, and I think we’ve more or less ruled him out as the intended target. He was on the board of two charities, with an ex-wife who sang his praises and a dog-rescue group that started an adoption grant in his honor. The guy was practically a saint.” Grady leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. Somehow, he looked both relaxed and accusatory.

Abbot Keyes felt it, too. He clutched his mug again and gazed down into its depths. “You know what’s funny? I’d talked to Kevin about using him for a reference. I was already planning to leave when he and his dad died. I only stayed on as long as I did because… God, it sounds terrible to say out loud, but here you go: I stayed at Digital Scaffolding because Chris was gone. He was such a bully, I hated having him for a boss. His wife took over after the funeral—but mostly she was doing the work of shutting the company down. I don’t think it made much money, and it was never her baby. She didn’t want to run it, and she had money of her own.”

“Speaking of Janette Gilman—any thoughts on her? You think she had something to do with it?” Grady asked.

“I mean…?” Keyes replied, a slow shrug joining the sentiment. “She seemed like a nice lady, but I didn’t know her well. I didn’t know her at all until after Chris died; I’d only seen her once or twice in passing. After that, she came into the office a couple of days a week—sorting out paperwork, making phone calls, I don’t know. She worked out of Chris’s office. Within three or four months, I think, she’d cleaned house and shut the doors. But by then I’d quit to go work as a freelance writer.”

“You don’t do that anymore?” Leda asked.

“No. It’s really hard. Even when you know people at Amazon or have contacts at some of the consulting firms, there’s all these weird rules for tech writing when you work for big digital marketplaces, and it’s hard to make anybody happy, ever. I gave up on that pretty quick.”

Grady asked, “Then you went to work for Uber?”

“No, then I went to work for Starbucks. Don’t laugh,” Keyes said hastily, even though no one had done so. “The hours are okay, and the benefits are pretty good. But it was really hectic, and I had a hard time keeping up.”

“Then you went to Uber?”

“Yeah, then I went to Uber. It’s better, kind of. I don’t have to answer to anybody, and that’s something. I want to go into IT, though. That’s why I’m back here at the university, taking computer science classes. It sounds perfect—you get an office to yourself, and you help baby boomers reset their internet passwords. Stuff like that,” he said dreamily.

“That can’t possibly require a degree,” Leda said.

He shrugged again. “Sometimes IT jobs require the degrees just to get an interview. Companies put it in the job listings, even if you never need to know Java, or C++, or anything like that in order to do the job. Everybody needs a job, and employers around here get picky. You can’t just apply for whatever strikes your fancy, like, ‘Hey, I’m Abbot—and I know how to do what you need done. Hire me!’ ”

Leda’s eyes went wide, and she went stiff. She stopped breathing for a few seconds.

Grady agreed. “Nah, I hear ya. It’s a competitive world. Hey… hey, Leda, you all right?” He nudged her with the side of his arm.

She was fine. She was just distracted. A vivid white light was creeping into the edge of her vision.

Niki put her hand on Leda’s wrist. “You okay, babe?”

“I’m fine!” she said, too loudly. Everyone in the café area turned to look at her, and she cringed.

“Sorry…” she said more quietly. “Sorry, everyone. But yes,” she added to Grady and Niki. “I’m all right. I, um… I thought I was about to sneeze.”

“A useful kind of sneeze?” Niki leaned in.

Grady leaned in, too. “A regular sneeze, I’m sure.” He took one last look at his notes, slapped the book shut, and tucked it into his pocket. He folded his hands on the table. “Now, once more, for the record, where were you again when the murders were committed?”

“My stepbrother was killed in a car wreck a few days before. I was at his funeral in Tacoma.”

“I realize it’s been a while, but I’m sorry for your loss. And, Mr. Keyes, I want to thank you again for your time. I know you don’t have to meet us like this, and you’ve been a big help.”

“I have?”

Grady eyed Leda with concern.

“From the standpoint of updating our records, absolutely. You’ve been a big help, and… and…”

Leda was already standing up, and Niki was right behind her—pushing her chair back with the plastic-booted foot she was dragging around behind herself.

“Thank you,” he finished awkwardly. With a brief handshake, he followed the women back out of the bookstore and into the parking lot.

By the time he caught up to them, Leda was doubled over—catching her breath. Her head was throbbing and there was a weird yellow halo around her vision that was so bright she could hardly see out of one eye.

“Hey, hey, Leda,” he said. “Look at me.”

“I can’t. It’s too hard.” She squinted in his general direction, trying to make out the shape of his face.

“What happened in there? Did you get a flash? Did it tell you anything good? Do you think he’s our guy? Are… are you going to be okay?”

“I think I’m having an ocular migraine,” she said. “Let me sit down a second.”

“What’s an ocular migraine?” he asked.

“It’s… it’s a migraine that doesn’t hurt, most of the time, but it… it’s like all this light, and all these sparkles, man.”

Niki helped her drop herself onto a concrete parking space header, where Leda sat with her knees almost up against her boobs. The header wasn’t any more than ten inches high. She felt like a kindergartner.

Niki finished the rest. “Some people think that Joan of Arc had them. Like, when she thought she was looking at God, she was looking at a neural irregularity that created a light show behind her eyes. It’s no big deal, usually.”

“Do you often get those, when you have flashes of the psychic variety?”

“Sometimes,” Leda told him. “But it’s just as likely to be unrelated. I’m fine, it’s really fine. It’s not like I drove here. I don’t need to see that well, not right this second.”

“Well, thank God for that, right? But did you see anything?”

“Nope, just a light show.” She squinted and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hands, never mind the mascara smudge. “I’m really sorry about that. I wish I had something more useful to tell you, but that’s all I’ve got: a real bright light behind my eyes, and ooh… it’s starting to sparkle.”

When everyone was confident that Leda was not going to fall over or pass out, they all piled back into Grady Merritt’s car and headed back south, into the city.