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Did Jack Speros know his killer?
The fluorite pendulum had been dangling motionless over the mat, but now it swung hard over to Yes.
Not much doubt in that answer. I hated to ask the follow-up, but I would have been remiss if I didn’t.
Did Chloe Fairfield kill Jack Speros?
The pendulum sailed back and forth just as hard this time, except it went in the other direction, right over to No.
That it was so emphatic in its reply made me feel a lot better. No, I really hadn’t thought Chloe could be the murderer — not just because I’d seen her aura and knew hers wasn’t the soul of a killer, but also because the simple physics of the case indicated that someone barely five foot five and who maybe weighed a hundred and ten pounds on a good day certainly wasn’t capable of throttling a healthy young man with six inches and at least sixty or seventy pounds on her.
Still, even though I was very, very glad that my sister hadn’t been involved in Jack’s death, the mystery had only deepened.
He’d known his killer…which meant it couldn’t have been anyone local. Not that I’d truly suspected such a thing, since he knew no one here except Chloe and there wouldn’t have been any reason for the murder, except possibly a break-in and a burglary gone wrong.
That theory didn’t make any sense, though, because there hadn’t been any sign of forced entry.
I ran a hand through my hair, feeling the silky strands fall back on my shoulders, heavy and straight. Once or twice I’d thought about cutting it shorter, since I’d heard horror stories about long hair and grabby baby hands, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do that.
No, I’d just resign myself to ponytails and messy updos for the first couple of years.
All right, so a stranger had come to Globe for the sole purpose of killing Jack Speros. But why? According to Chloe, he wasn’t a person who had any real enemies…except possibly Bryce Arsenault…and no one should have had any motive to get rid of him.
And if her accounts of how he’d been desperate to get her back after she broke up with him were correct, it wasn’t as if we were dealing with some kind of love triangle here. There hadn’t been a desperate third party who’d decided to drive to Globe and pull some kind of Fatal Instinct maneuver. Then again, people kept all sorts of secrets from one another. Even if the suspect wasn’t some woman who’d had her own designs on Jack, that didn’t mean there might not be someone in his past…like Bryce Arsenault…who had a vendetta against him, for whatever reason.
The problem was, I didn’t know even where to begin to look for such a person. Chloe had offered me one possible suspect, but she obviously hadn’t been able to think of anyone except Bryce who’d had any kind of negative interactions with her ex-boyfriend.
Both my feet and my head were starting to hurt. Although I wanted to solve this mystery, I also wanted to make sure my child had an easy, drama-free entrance into the world.
Which meant it was time to sit down on the couch for a while.
I headed into the living room, where Calvin was sitting in one of the armchairs, reading. Always nonfiction, though, this time a book about the Pueblo revolt in New Mexico.
He set it aside as I entered and gave me an expectant look. “Everything okay?”
“It’s fine,” I said. “Chloe said Alec is going in front of the judge shortly to try to get the case dismissed. And I tried working with my pendulum, but all it would tell me is that the killer is someone Jack Speros knew and that it definitely wasn’t my sister.”
“Well, that’s something, I suppose,” Calvin replied. “At least that means it wasn’t anyone here in Globe.”
A conclusion I’d already drawn, which meant I didn’t have a whole lot to go on right now.
“It’s too bad his parents are so hostile toward Chloe and her family,” I said next. “Otherwise, I might try to talk to them and see if they could provide any clues. Unfortunately, I have a feeling if I tried to reach out, they’d just shoot me down.”
“Probably,” Calvin agreed. “They seemed pretty set on wanting to pin the blame on your sister, even though it’s obvious she didn’t have anything to do with their son’s death.”
“And I’ve already talked to Chloe, and she doesn’t seem to know anything.” I paused there, knowing I was starting to sound a little whiny. Not that anyone could blame me, given the circumstances, but since there wasn’t much point in going over the same ground for the tenth time and expecting something different, I decided to leave it alone. “I suppose we just need to wait and see what the judge says. If he makes this whole thing go away, then it’s sort of a moot point, I guess.”
Calvin inclined his head ever so slightly. Not a large gesture, but we’d been together long enough that I knew what he was thinking. Even if the judge dismissed Chloe’s case, I’d have a hard time letting all this go…especially since in my heart of hearts I knew that the hex on my Jeep and Jack’s murder were related, even if I hadn’t been able to put the pieces together yet.
And while I thought there might be a number of people out there who had a bone to pick with me for sending their relatives to prison, I couldn’t see how they could be involved in any of this, not with all the dark magic that seemed to be flying around town.
Then again, I supposed a practitioner of that sort of magic might want to keep it on the down-low.
Calvin’s phone rang then, and he fished it out of his pocket. “Calvin here,” he said, then paused, as though allowing the caller to go into detail as to their reason for reaching out. He murmured, “Mm-hmm,” a couple of times, which didn’t help at all to illuminate what the person was saying on the other end of the call. Once they were done, though, he said, “Thanks,” then ended the call and returned the phone to his pocket.
I sent him an expectant look, although I managed to refrain from asking, Well?
“That was Ben,” he told me, the amused light in his eyes letting me know he’d seen right away how hard it had been for me to prevent myself from asking who the caller had been. “He was able to find Bryce Arsenault. He never came back to California, but is still living in Vermont, where he’s finishing up his final year of college. He also works in the school’s library.”
