Chapter Eight

 

I was expecting Detectives Kolchak and whatever-the-other-one’s-name-was, so the sight of Jinx, John’s sister, threw me.

“Hi!” Jinx said brightly. “I thought you might want help with all the last-minute details.”

Jinx was tall and slender. She had shoulder-length curly brown hair and the same striking gold-brown eye color as John. In fact, the family resemblance between them was pronounced, resulting in Jinx inheriting a chin and nose too fierce for mere prettiness. Looks were all they shared. She had only been a baby when John joined the military, so not only did they not grow up under the same roof, they didn’t really know each other very well. In my opinion.

“Hey. That was nice of you. Come in,” I said, moving aside.

She inspected me more closely. “What the… Are you guys fighting?”

“Fighting?”

“You’re…” She pointed at my face. I laughed, then winced as my cut lip re-split.

“No, of course not. I fell.”

“Oh my God. You’ll have to do better than that. What’s wrong?”

Jinx was the sole member of John’s circle of family and friends who didn’t think John was making the worst mistake of his life by marrying me. Her quick and sincere concern undermined my determination to match John’s stoic resolve. In all fairness, no one has ever accused me of being the stoic type.

“Nothing. Everything’s fine. John thinks…” I didn’t even know how to put it into words.

“Better get used to it,” Jinx growled, following me inside.

“Hello, Trouble,” John said from the living room, when walked through the entryway.

She scowled at him in response. This was their normal mode of greeting each other, though, so I wasn’t concerned. “What have you been doing to make Cos cry?”

Okay, I could have done without that observation—which wasn’t true, for the record.

“Tactful as ever,” John replied. “Cosmo is feeling under the weather, which isn’t surprising given everything that’s happened. I’ve suggested that maybe we should skip the rehearsal and he can have an early night.”

“Skip the rehearsal?” Jinx looked as horrified as I felt.

“How much practice does it take to say I do?”

“It’s the logistics. It’s coordination of all the event elements.”

I spread my hands to her in gratitude.

“We’re not taking Baghdad. We’re exchanging wedding vows in front of friends and family.”

“A lot of friends and family,” I pointed out. “Almost one hundred people. Which takes some coordination.”

Jinx spread her hand to me like, What he said.

John’s lip curled. “Seriously? You two think you can double-team me?”

But Jinx, butterfly-like, had already lit on a new topic for consideration. “What do you mean given everything that’s happened? What’s happened?”

John brought her up to speed while delivering a brief lecture on the importance of keeping up with current events versus spending hours texting friends who were being paid to work at their places of employment, not play games on their smartphones all day.

“You mean the guy who runs that cute little shop on Valencia that sells all the witchcraft supplies?” Jinx dialed down the last minutes of the lecture, turning to me. “How totally weird. I was there only yesterday!”

“You were…” John looked flabbergasted, which, in other circumstances, might have been enjoyable. In this case, I probably looked equally flabbergasted.

“Seamus mostly sold antiques,” I tried to intervene. Jinx had recently moved into her own apartment, and it wasn’t impossible that she might want to furnish—

“That’s right. I’m studying witchcraft,” Jinx informed us.

I say us, but that announcement was clearly designed to get John’s goat—no pun intended—and it succeeded.

In the midst of a spiel on the unfortunate attraction the supernatural held for gullible hormonal adolescents and, all too frequently, emotionally immature adults, the doorbell rang again, and I turned—leaped—to answer it. I don’t think the other two even heard those merry chimes over their raised voices.

Two plainclothes detectives stood on the porch.

They were unfamiliar to me, but I knew them for cops the minute I saw them. The Craft has a long and unhappy relationship with law enforcement, which was one reason—hopefully the main reason—everyone I knew was skeptical, at best, of my plans to marry John.

“Mr. Saville?”

“Yes.”

The first cop offered me a glimpse of his badge. He was short, wiry, and gray. Gray hair, gray skin, gray suit. “I’m Sergeant Kolchak. This is Sergeant Iff. We’d like to ask you a few questions about your meeting with Seamus Reitherman last night.”

“If it’s not inconvenient,” Iff said.

He was also middle-aged and short, but the palette was rosier: plump, pink-cheeked, and daffodil-colored hair coiffed in a style favored by medieval monks and British pols who favor leaving the European Union.

“Of course,” I said. “I’m sorry I missed you earlier.”

I stepped aside, the detectives crossed our threshold, and stopped short at the sight of John coming up behind me.

“Kolchak. Iff.” John sounded brisk but cordial.

“Commissioner,” they said in near unison. They looked about as thrilled to see him as I’m sure I looked to see them.

John slid his arm around my waist—a little protective, a little possessive—and said to me, “Joan and I are going to make sure everything’s set up and ready to go.”

I nodded, grateful beyond words for that casual, maybe even instinctive gesture from John. The point wasn’t lost on Iff and Kolchak, who somehow managed to exchange a glance without so much as a flicker of their eyes.

John smiled at his investigators. “Gentlemen, our wedding rehearsal starts in one hour, so I’d consider it a personal favor if you could keep this brief.”

“Of course, Commissioner.” Kolchak’s smile was as meaningless as my own.

John’s arm tightened in a small, reassuring squeeze; then he released me and followed Jinx out to the kitchen.

“Like marrying you wouldn’t be stressful enough,” Jinx was saying.

The detectives were silent, waiting for the moment we all heard the door leading into the backyard slam shut.

I said at random, “We’re getting married on the bottom terrace of the back garden. John had thirty ivory heirloom roses planted. It’s going to be a white garden.”

“Sounds very convivial,” Iff replied.

I gave him a doubtful look and gestured toward the steps leading down to the living room. “Would you like to sit?”

Iff nodded graciously, preceding me down. Kolchak followed. Iff took a seat at one end of the sofa.

I waited, but Kolchak gestured for me to sit. “That’s okay.” He took out a small notebook. “I have a bad back. It’s easier if I stand.”

I sat on the opposite end of the sofa and resisted the temptation to make meaningless chitchat. Learning to survive interrogation is one of the things we learn in high school.

Kolchak leisurely flipped through his notebook. I glanced at Iff, who offered a genial and unconvincing smile. “Congratulations on your impending nuptials,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t mind him,” Kolchak said, turning pages. “He’s trying to improve his vocabulary in thirty days.”

Pyewacket appeared at the top of the steps. He eyed our visitors, flicking his tail as he sized up the situation.

Iff brightened. “Oh, he’s a beauty! Russian Blue?”

“Yes.”

Pyewacket raised his fangs and disappeared.

“He’s not very social,” I said.

Iff laughed and sighed. “Yeah, we get that a lot.”

I said, “Can I offer you tea or coffee or, um, something?” I wasn’t sure we had tea or coffee or um something, but waiting for the interview to begin was making me nervous—as it was no doubt intended to do.

“No thanks,” Iff said. “We’ve had lunch.”

Kolchak said suddenly, briskly, “Yep, times have sure changed. Our first gay police commissioner. And he’s getting married in a big high-society wedding.”

It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t try to answer.

“Where was it you first met?”

Presumably Kolchak was loosening me up by lobbing a few easy questions before he started playing hardball. I explained about meeting John at Bonhams and then again at the Black and White Ball.

“So it was what they call a whirlwind courtship?”

“I suppose so.”

Iff leaned back and studied the ceiling. Kolchak proceeded to ask a lot of general background-information questions. I told him my mother was French but my father was American and that I had been born in Salem, Massachusetts. I had grown up mostly in San Francisco but had attended Université Lumière in Domrémy.

“That’s in France?” Iff inquired.

“Yes.”

“But you’re an American citizen?”

“Yes.”

I explained about buying Blue Moon Antiques four years earlier from Oliver Sandhurst. “He was in business for forty years. He’s written a number of books about historical San Francisco.”

In fact, “Uncle” Oliver, as he was known within the Craft, had penned several books about San Francisco’s occult history. Not all of them approved by la Société. At one time there had even been talk of sanctions. Of course, it had come to nothing. Oliver was a beloved figure. Even an institution.

Iff and Kolchak appeared disinterested in Oliver Sandhurst’s literary endeavors. “Is it fair to say there was some conflict with yourself and Reitherman over the purchase of the store?” Kolchak asked.

I had to give them credit for doing their homework.

“Well, yes. Seamus made an offer as well, but Oliver chose to go with mine.”

“Why do you think that was?”

“Two reasons, I’m guessing. I was in a position to offer more money down, and my plans for the shop were more in keeping with Oliver’s vision.”

“Elucidate,” Iff invited.

“I believe Oliver’s feeling was that Seamus was mostly interested in Blue Moon for its location and footprint.”

That was true, as far as it went. But Oliver—as well as many within the Craft community—had also looked down on what he deemed Seamus’s “business practices.” By which he meant Seamus’s decision to sell kitschy and cheap occult souvenirs and gimmicks alongside some really wonderful heirloom pieces.

It’s one thing for non-practitioners to sell Craft items, but when someone who knows better chooses to sell the sacred—and items that mock and mimic the sacred—not everyone takes a lenient view.

“And that led to some hard feelings between yourself and Reitherman,” Kolchak said.

“I…not on my part.”

“But certainly on Reitherman’s part.” Kolchak smiled. His teeth were gray too. “No need to answer. We’ve had confirmation from plenty of people on that score.”

“Any ill will was on Seamus’s side. I got what I wanted.”

“Do you usually get what you want?” Iff inquired interestedly.

I ignored that.

“Would you say it’s fair to assume that Sandhurst’s decision to sell to you was the inciting incident—”

“No.”

“Catalyst—”

“Certainly not!”

“Start of a fairly contentious—”

“No,” I said. “We were competitors, yes. But—”

“Business rivals, you’d say?”

“By that definition, I’m business rivals with every antiques dealer in the city. It wasn’t a contentious relationship.”

“Wasn’t it, though?” Iff put in. “Weren’t there hard feelings over a transaction regarding a fancy gold mirror?”

That threw me. I didn’t know how they could have learned about the mirror. It was a scandal within the Craft, but only within the Craft.

“It wasn’t— You’re placing too much importance on that.”

Kolchak asked, “On what?”

“It’s natural that dealers will bid against each other. That’s how it works in this business.” It sounded lame, but it was true.

However, I wasn’t surprised when Iff said, “We’re talking about a Louis XVI rococo hanging mirror that was put up for private auction.”

“Yes. It was three years ago. The mirror isn’t, in itself, that valuable, but it was a family heirloom, so I bid heavily and won the auction.”

“And then Reitherman tried to do an end run around you,” Kolchak said.

I shrugged. “Yes. I didn’t even know I was bidding against him, but apparently, he took the loss personally. He went to the mirror’s owner and offered them more money, a lot more money—in fact, a ridiculous amount—if they would cancel the sale and allow him to purchase the mirror.”

Iff said, “But instead, the owner contacted you, and you were irate at Reitherman’s duplicitousness.”

“You’re making this sound like a much bigger deal than it was,” I protested.

“But it was a big deal to Reitherman. That’s obvious.”

Yes. It had been obvious at the time too.

“He was still irritated over my purchase of Blue Moon—and, like I said, I think he took being outbid personally.”

Probably. But that was the tip of the iceberg. Seamus had deliberately—knowing the history of the rococo mirror, knowing that recovery of the mirror was important to me and to my entire family—bid against me. And when he lost, fair and square, he tried to get the mirror through cheating. It had not been his finest hour, and I had been angry. No question. But it had also been three years ago. I’m not good at holding grudges. Maman says I lack “constancy of purpose,” but honestly, I don’t have the heart for hatred.

“Once again you had bested Reitherman,” Kolchak said.

“If you want to call it that.”

“That’s what Reitherman called it.”

I said nothing.

“Would it be fair to say that Reitherman believed you were a rich dilettante,” Iff said, “and that he considered you a hobbyist and thought your success—and you do seem to be very successful—was entirely due to your family’s wealth?”

“If he did, that was on him.”

“Oh, he did,” Iff assured me. “According to everyone we’ve talked to, Reitherman hated you.”

I could see the direction this was headed. “Look, if there were bad feelings, they were on Seamus’s side, not mine. I rarely, if ever, gave him a thought.”

“That would make it worse,” Kolchak informed me. “Nothing aggravates a person like finding out their archenemy doesn’t even know they exist.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t know—” I stopped. Tried again. “I know where you’re going with this. If Seamus hated me as much as you’ve decided he did, why did he ask me to come to his shop last night? But he did invite me.”

“Exactly,” Kolchak said. He gave me another of those wintery smiles. “Why did he invite you? Not to sell you a book of poetry, that’s for sure. But we think we’ve got that worked out.”

“It’s a matter of proving it,” Iff said. He smiled too.

“Which we hope to do before the wedding,” Kolchak said. “That would be better for everyone, wouldn’t you say?”

I swallowed. My throat was drier than graveyard dust.

“Better for the commissioner,” Iff agreed. He rose. “No question there.”

“We’ll be talking to you,” Kolchak said.

Iff said, “Soon.”