1 Death Warmed Over Read online

  “A voodoo doll?”

  “Kind of. Not quite. Unlike a voodoo doll, in which a curse can be lifted by destroying the thing, a bilongo is simply a representation of the ‘working’, not the actual curse itself. It merely acts as a warning.” He collected the doll and placed it back into the pouch.

  “I’m going to need that as evidence,” Becca said, holding out her hand. “When the case is over, you can have it back. Don’t worry.”

  He nodded, then handed the pouch to her. “I was with her at the time she found it.” His face turned several shades of red. “We had recently started, ahem, seeing each other. Nothing too serious, mind you. Just dipping my toes back in the dating pool again, one might say. Anyway, I was with her when she found it. The look on her face. My God. It was ghastly. She immediately broke down in a fit of despair. Took forever for her to finally explain to me what it meant.”

  Becca jotted down some notes on her pad, ignoring the urge to calculate the significant age difference between Spenser Blakely and Andrea. To each their own, I guess.

  “Funny,” Silas said. “We spoke with Ms. Alvarez’s friend…a Ms. Ceci Palmer…and she didn’t mention that you two were seeing each other.”

  “Like I said, we had only just begun dating. Though we weren’t hiding it, we both felt it was too soon to advertise our relationship yet.”

  “Did she know why she’d been cursed?” Becca asked, trying to keep the interview on track.

  Blakely shook his head. “She was never really sure. Yes, she and Omo Sango had heated words one evening after a ceremony, but that was after he had told her of his intentions to cast the working against her. Before she could protest formally, she was turned away. Excommunicated from their little group, apparently.”

  “So that’s why you began your journalistic crusade against this group?” Silas asked. Becca wasn’t sure why he was so focused on Blakely’s obvious hostility toward the religion, but she decided to let the question stand.

  “I’ve always distrusted them, Mr. Mot. Always tried to warn people about their nefarious magical practices.”

  “Yet, you were dating one of their members,” he responded. “That seems a touch hypocritical to me.” The man in the all black suit leaned forward in his chair, his teeth gleaming back at the newspaper man. “Tell me, Mr. Blakely, how did Andrea feel about your opinion of her religion?”

  “I…uh…”

  “It’s a simple question. She couldn’t have been too happy with your little expose on Santeria.”

  “I don’t see how that’s important.” He started to reach for his non-existent tie again, but remembered his last attempt, and just began fidgeting with his fingernails instead. “She tried to tell me that it’s not all bad. Tried to convince me that most of it was good. Peace-loving.”

  “But you knew better, didn’t you?” Silas pointed toward the display case filled with the various trinkets of the reporter’s travels. “You’d seen it firsthand.”

  “Um, excuse me. What does this have to do with anything?” Blakely asked. “I thought you were here to talk about Omo Sango.”

  “Jacinto Garcia,” Silas said.

  “They’re the same person. It’s just the name his followers call him.”

  Silas leaned back in his chair and glanced at Becca with a wink. “Your witness, Counselor.”

  This man is going to get me fired, she thought, shaking her head. She had no idea what Silas Mot’s line of questioning was supposed to have accomplished, other than to frustrate Blakely. Or worse, sued for slander.

  “Sorry about my colleague, Mr. Blakely,” Becca said. “He’s a little unorthodox.”

  “That’s putting it mildly,” the reporter said.

  “Okay. Let’s get back to Jacinto Garcia. Of course, I’ve heard of him. He’s the leader of a known gang known as Los Cuernos del Diablo.”

  “I’m very familiar with the group, yes.”

  “We’re aware that they operate out around Gruenwald Commons, but we’ve never been able to track down their base of operations. Did Andrea ever mention where Garcia hung out? Where he could be found?”

  Spenser Blakely nodded, then glared at Silas defiantly. “I’ll be happy to tell you as long as you promise to take that horrible man with you.”

  Silas’ self-assured grin stretched even wider.

  “You have my word,” Becca said, envying her own promise. I couldn’t get rid of him even if I tried.

  The reporter told them what they wanted to know and Becca ushered Silas out of The Summer Haven Chronicler before he could offend anyone else that happened to be in the building.

  9

  GRUENWALD COMMONS

  WEDNESDAY, 1:05 PM

  The Gruenwald Commons warehouse district was about five miles north of Summer Haven, almost equidistant from Saint Augustine further north on A1A. Located near the docks, it was grimy, and cluttered with iron cranes and graffiti-covered brick buildings that should have been torn down decades ago. Technically, Gruenwald Commons was unincorporated. A sort of no-man’s land within the county boundaries. But that didn’t mean it didn’t have its own special governing hierarchy among its denizens.

  The area was well known to be run by a corrupt labor union with close ties to organized crime. Despite this common knowledge, however, no law enforcement agencies had ever been able to pin anything more than a parking ticket to the powers that be.

  Fortunately, Becca Cole wasn’t interested in the upper brass of this seedy section of her home county. Today, she was after something much more tangible.

  “You mind telling me what your little interrogation back at the newspaper was all about?” she asked, keeping her eyes fixed on the road.

  “Ah, just as you coppers like saying…playing a hunch, I suppose.”

  She rolled her eyes. “What kind of hunch?”

  Silas shrugged. “Not sure yet. But that little display case inside Blakely’s office?”

  “Yeah?”

  “All those little knick-knacks and doo-dads?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I saw a similar collection inside Andrea Alvarez’s house.”

  This caught her attention, though she wasn’t quite sure of the correlation. She gave the man a quick glance. “Where?”

  “In that travel chest in her living room,” he said. He pulled the lever on the side of the passenger seat and tilted it back. “Of course, they weren’t knick-knacks and doo-dads in Alvarez’s home. They were ceremonial. Not collectables. They were part of her daily life.”

  “And?”

  “Like I said, I’m not quite sure. But something about Blakely’s little collection just bothers me.” He popped another Warhead in his mouth and grimaced. “Also, Blakely’s insistence in calling Garcia by his Santeria name.”

  “What about it?”

  “Well, he kept saying that it was the name his followers called him.”

  She thought about it for a second, then considered the ritualistic knick-knacks stashed in the man’s display case, and a lightbulb lit up in brilliant one-hundred and twenty watts. “Spenser Blakely is secretly involved in Santeria!”

  Silas touched a finger to one side of his nose and winked. “Exactly.”

  “So why the charade? Why go on this crusade against his own religion?”

  “That’s the hundred-thousand-dollar question. But I bet you dimes to those same dollars that Andrea Alvarez was in on it. There’s no way she’d go along with it unless she knew why Blakely was doing it. She certainly wouldn’t have been dating the man.”

  Becca shuddered at the thought. “Dude’s old enough to be her dad. And just kind of sleazy. What did she see in him?”

  “Dollar signs?”

  She shook her head. “No way. The Chronicler is only scraping by. I don’t know how they haven’t gone bankrupt already.”

  “Then power. Political influence. Whether the paper is successful financially, it’s still your community’s primary news source. There’s a lot of power behind a
position like that.”

  Becca had to admit that it made sense…to some degree. But she’d have to ponder this more later on as she saw her destination coming into view up the road. Checking over both shoulders, she pulled her cruiser into the parking lot of U-Store-It, an abandoned old self-storage facility off Wilkshire Boulevard, and coasted toward the dilapidated brick building that had once been the complex’s office.

  “So, this is definitely not what I expected from a possible drug kingpin and powerful Santero,” Silas said.

  “What did you expect? A big mansion and an Olympic swimming pool? These guys are street thugs. Nothing more.”

  Silas was right about one thing. The place had definitely seen better days. The building’s windows were nearly opaque with grime, pollen, and spray paint. A wall of weeds and vines shot up around its exterior, strangling the place in a mesh of vegetation. Gang tags could be easily seen painted here and there along the brick façade.

  “Hope you’re up on your tetanus shots,” Silas whispered while opening his car door to step out.

  “Wait!” Becca grabbed him by the arm. “This is going to be dangerous. You need to hang back. Stay with the car.”

  Silas chuckled. “But I’m Death. Trust me. I’ll be fine.”

  “You might believe that, but I’m not willing to take the chance you’re just a nut job with connections to the governor’s office.”

  Gently, he removed her fingers from his forearm and slipped out of the car. “I appreciate your concern, Chief Cole,” he said, shifting a piece of candy from one side of his mouth to the other. “But I’m a grown man—in a manner of speaking—and capable of making my own decisions. And if you recall what the governor told you, this is my investigation too.”

  She closed her car door and sidled up to him as he strode toward the front of the office. “Well, are you at least carrying?”

  She, of course, knew the answer to that. They had done a thorough search on him when they’d taken him to the station. He’d been unarmed. She shuddered to imagine a man as delusional as Silas Mot carrying a firearm, but it would have at least offered him some protection if things got messy in there. Los Cuernos del Diablo were not known for playing nice. Especially with cops. If Blakely was correct and they actually used this old place for their base, they weren’t likely to be happy to see them.

  “Carrying what?”

  “You know what I’m talking about.”

  He grinned, glancing down at the gun she held in her right hand and shook his head. “No. But I do have this.” He held up his hand, index finger pointed up in the air like a finger gun. “Trust me. It’s far deadlier than that piece of iron you have.”

  She sighed before stepping in front of him. “Just stay behind me the whole time we’re in there. I’m wearing Kevlar. You’re not and these guys in there are serious.”

  “So am I, Chief.” Silas nodded his assent, then gestured toward the door with his free hand while pulling his finger gun up to his chest. “But if it’ll make you feel better, then after you.”

  Her gut reeled with a swarm of butterflies just imagining the million possible ways this could go wrong, but she willed her feet to move forward, walked up to the double glass doors, and pulled on one of the handles. Surprisingly, it wasn’t locked. She opened it, kept her firearm ready, and stepped inside. She felt, more than heard, Silas follow her.

  The office’s foyer was just as deserted as the exterior of the building. An old reception desk, leaning to one side on broken legs, sat directly in front of them. The checkered linoleum floors, almost carpeted in yellowing old papers and windswept leaves, looked like it hadn’t seen the business end of a broom in years.

  Six years actually, she thought. U-Store-It went out of business six years ago.

  Despite the daylight hour, the room was dim. Moats of dust flitted up from the scant rays of sunlight trickling in from the grime-covered windows.

  “Hello? Anybody home?” Silas shouted, causing Becca to jump.

  She gave him a silent slap across the arm. “…the heck are you doing?” she hissed. “You trying to announce our presence or something?”

  He blinked. “Well, yes. Actually. We can’t question this Omo Sango fellow if we can’t find him, right? I figured one of his associates might make introductions for us.”

  Becca pinched the bridge of her nose.

  “I’d say his ‘associates’ would just as soon put a bullet in our heads than take us to their leader. I’d rather find him on our own, thank you very much. It’s all about stealth in a situation like this.”

  “Got it.” Silas nodded, then pointed toward a door over to their left with some light shining through a crack near the floor. “Maybe Mr. Garcia is that way.”

  Becca considered her sanity in allowing this lunatic to continue tagging along on her homicide investigation. He was going to get her killed. Then again, if he truly was Death, wouldn’t he be able to tell if they were alone in this office building? Wouldn’t he be able to sense the presence of mortals or something? For the briefest of moments, she considered pitching the idea to him, but thought better of it.

  No need to play into this psycho’s delusions.

  “Come on,” she whispered.

  She stepped over to the door, which swung back and forth on hinges, and pushed it open just enough to peek through. Sure enough, the room beyond was lit, but she almost wished it hadn’t been. Mentally clearing the room, she stepped into a large chamber with a low ceiling pocked with water stains and sagging pink insulation. An old rusted dolly cart lay without wheels immediately to her right. Beside it, rested a flickering candle. She scanned the room to see dozens more candles lining the walls along the concrete floor and illuminating the room with an eerie warm glow.

  But it was what was in the center of the room that gelled her knees to rubber. For a moment, she could only gawk at the grotesque effigy of bones and terror that lumbered more than seven feet tall.

  She glanced over at Silas, then back at the statue.

  “Oh, this is just great,” he whispered. “This is all I need.”

  She looked back at him, waiting for him to explain what he meant. The statue, which was straight out of childhood nightmares, was that of an azure robed skeletal figure holding a scythe in one hand and a globe of the earth in the other. A crown rested upon its skull and several bead necklaces of multiple colors hung loose around its neck. Trinkets of all kinds—coins, liquor, bullets, and other shiny things—rested at the statue’s feet as offerings.

  “No, no, no, no, no.” Silas was obviously nervous about something. “Not now. Not here.”

  “Care to explain yourself, Mr. Grim Reaper?” she asked. She wasn’t sure how her new ‘partner’ was going to deal with seeing a likeness of the mythological being he identified himself with, but she was rather curious to see how it played out.

  He placed a palm on his face and shook his head. “Of all the dingy little drug hangouts in all the world, she’s gotta be in this one.”

  She?

  “What are you talking about?”

  “He’s talking about me, dear,” came a silky feminine voice from the shadows on the other side of the chamber. There was a thick Hispanic accent to it, though Becca couldn’t quite place the region.

  As if materializing from thin air, a striking woman wearing a white, form-fitting sun dress stepped out of the shadows toward them. The woman had a dark, caramel complexion—probably Latin or Native American—with long, flowing black hair that cascaded over her bare shoulders to the small of her back. Her skin was flawless, unmarred by the typical tattoos and piercings Becca expected to see on anyone associated with the gang known to haunt the Gruenwald Commons storage complex. And her bright, emerald eyes seemed to be fixed solely on her companion with laser-like intensity.

  “Esperanza,” Silas said with a nod of recognition. “I’m assuming, anyway…” He paused, looking her up and down. “It’s always so hard to keep up with what you might look like at any giv
en moment. So many makeovers.”

  She smiled at this. “Can’t say the same about you. Until now, that is. Like the new look,” Esperanza replied, gesturing lavishly at his body. “Finally decided to go slumming with the mortals like the rest of us, I take it? Or maybe you had no choice, eh?”

  Becca looked over at Silas. She decided it best to ignore the ‘mortals’ comment. “You know this woman?”

  He shrugged. “Woman is a bit generous a term, I’d say.”

  “Oh, he’s just being overly dramatic,” Esperanza said. “That’s what men do, after all, whenever they bump into their wives when they’re with another woman.”

  10

  “Ex-wife,” Silas barked. “Most definitely ex.”

  Esperanza laughed at this. To Becca, the sound was something akin to bones rattling in a wooden box.

  “This is your wife?” she asked.

  “Ex. She’s my ex-wife,” he said. “Don’t let her get into your head. You’ll never get that mess untangled if you do. Trust me.”

  “And she’s here. Right now. Where our suspect is supposed to be?” Becca felt a growl of irritation rumbling up from her gut, but she suppressed it. Either this guy was more involved in Andrea Alvarez’s murder than he claimed or he was trying to sabotage her investigation.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he said.

  “I don’t think you do.”

  “It’s not like that. Before you start accusing me of tipping her off to this Garcia bloke, think again. I haven’t seen or spoken to Essie in nearly seventy-five years. In Berlin.”

  “Seventy-fi…” She stopped and looked at the beautiful Latina woman standing just three feet away from them. Surely, she would correct him. Surely, this woman, who obviously knew Silas, would shed some light on his delusion.

  “Oh, you’ve always had such a horrible memory, Ankou,” Esperanza said, clucking her tongue at him like a disapproving school teacher. “It wasn’t Berlin. It was in Belize. And it was forty-eight years ago.” Her eyes narrowed. “You took one of mine at the time, if you remember.”