“The beach?” Ceci asked, blowing her nose into a tissue as she and Becca sat downstairs on Andrea’s couch. The landlord had already come and gone, leaving the keys with the police chief. The sheriff’s office’s CSU was currently upstairs processing evidence in the victim’s bedroom. And Silas busied himself in the kitchen, boiling a pot of tea. “What was she doing at the beach? She was supposed to be here.” She sniffed. “I mean, she only left her house to go to work and that was pretty much it. She was too scared to go anywhere else.”
Becca could only shrug in response. “I’m not sure why she was there. Right now, it looks like she was left there by her killer.”
“And you said you found a knife in her back?”
“A dagger. Looked ceremonial.” She gestured toward the kitchen entrance. “Mr. Mot believes that the knife has something to do with those Osh…Och…”
“Orisha!” Silas shouted from the kitchen.
“What he said.” Becca scribbled the strange word down in her notepad. She wouldn’t forget it again. “So, what can you tell me about this curse you mentioned earlier?”
“The Death Curse.”
“Yes.”
Ceci dabbed her eyes with a tissue. A glob of black eyeliner came with it when she pulled it away. “It’s a pretty well-known story now. The Chronicler ran an article about it. Apparently, Spenser Blakely’s on a crusade to clean up all this black magic stuff from Summer Haven.” She looked up at the chief. “You didn’t read it? It was on the front page of last Sunday’s edition.”
Silas appeared in the living room, carrying two cups of steaming hot tea resting on saucers. He placed them on the coffee table in front of the ladies and went back to the kitchen to retrieve his own cup.
“You know this might be a crime scene, right?” Becca said to him. “Not the brightest move making tea right now.”
“Nonsense.” He strode back into the room with that infernal grin plastered on his face and began strolling around the room while sipping from the teacup. He stopped near the sliding glass door and examined the photos of family and friends that hung on the wall. “The kitchen is clean of any and all forensic evidence. I carefully examined it myself. Only thing in there is a wedge of cheese and an empty bottle of wine on the countertops. And I didn’t touch either of them.” He looked over at Ceci and pointed at the pictures. They all seemed to be focused around that of a young boy—ranging in age from an infant to around four years old. He pulled one of the pictures off the wall and showed it to Ceci.
“Who’s this?” he asked.
“Once again…crime scene!” Becca glared at him. “Stop touching stuff.”
He rolled his eyes, then placed the photo back on the shelf. “My apologies, Chief Cole.” He pointed at the kid in the picture. “I’m just curious about who he is. He seems pretty important to Ms. Alvarez.”
Ceci nodded. “That’s Jamie. Andrea’s son. He lives with his dad in Hammock Dunes,” she said. “Poor boy has a pretty serious form of autism and can be a handful. Because of Andrea’s history of mental illness, she figured he was better off with James, his father.”
Becca shot Silas a look, warning him not to interrupt the interview again, but he merely waved her off before returning his gaze to Ceci. “Thank you. Now, about this curse…and the man’s crusade you mentioned.”
Ceci nodded. “Well, there’s a pretty high concentration of Hispanics living on the outskirts of town. Andrea herself was from Bogota before she moved here as a teenager.” She took a sip of the tea. The cup clattered against the saucer as she set it back down, a clear indication of just how bad her hands were shaking. “Anyway, with this influx of Hispanics, there also came quite a few people who practiced Santeria.”
“Santeria,” Becca said. “Now, that’s like voodoo, right?”
Ceci shook her head. “That’s a misconception. Truth is, while they apparently share origins that come over from Africa, Santeria is predominantly practiced by Hispanics. They have a whole other set of rules, gods, and rituals.”
“Okay. So, Spenser Blakely ran a piece on all this?” Becca asked.
Ceci nodded.
“Excuse me,” Silas said. He’d now moved over to an old travel chest in one corner of the room and was peering inside. “Who’s Spenser Blakely exactly?”
“He’s the owner, publisher, editor, and chief reporter of our town’s newspaper, The Summer Haven Chronicler,” Becca explained. “But I’ll be honest, I rarely ever look at it. It’s much faster to find my news on Google.”
“Yeah, Spenser was kind of upset when he heard the news about Andrea’s curse,” Ceci said. “That’s when he decided to expose the religion—against Andrea’s will—in an article.”
“So, Blakely knew Andrea?”
“She worked for him. Did the occasional graphic design job for him.”
Becca thumbed through her notes. “But I thought she worked for Tate & Neely, the big advertising agency in the city.”
Ceci nodded. “She did. That was her full-time job. She just worked for Spenser on special projects and such.”
“I’m more curious about this curse you keep referring to,” Silas said, crouching down for a closer look at the chest. He reached inside, moving a few things around before stopping suddenly. His eyes widened for the briefest of seconds, then he turned and looked at Ceci. “Sorry. Tell me about this curse. Specifically.”
“Oh, yeah. That.” Ceci placed the cup down on the coffee table and rubbed her hands. “Happened a few weeks ago. She and her Santero apparently got into an argument after a ceremony.”
“Santero?” Becca asked.
“A priest of Santeria,” Silas explained.
“Yeah,” Ceci said. “Anyway, a few days later, she received a message from him saying he placed a curse on her and that she would be dead within the month.”
“You’re saying this Santero initiated a Brujeria against her?” Silas looked over at Becca. “It’s a ritual of dark magic designed to hurt someone. And it’s not taken lightly. It usually takes a pretty big reason for someone to use that kind of magic.”
“And Andrea believed this curse was real? That it would actually work?” Becca asked.
“Horribly so. She was terrified. Even had to go see Dr. Fruehan to get her anxiety medication increased just so she could sleep at night.”
“Fruehan?”
“Yeah. Emil Fruehan. That’s the name of her psychiatrist,” Ceci said. “He’d made amazing progress with Andrea before all this happened. He’d all but eliminated her schizophrenic symptoms and her bipolar disorder had become well-maintained. She was like a new woman. Then this Curse business came and all that progress just flushed down the drain.”
Becca scribbled down the information. She opened her mouth to ask another question when the sound of heavy boots coming from the stairs interrupted her.
“We’re pretty much finished up there,” said the head crime scene technician. “Didn’t find much. No unexpected fingerprints. All the hairs we found seemed to match hers.” The tech held up a plastic bag filled with several pill bottles. “Found these in the medicine cabinet. Psych meds mostly. But they’re controlled, so we’ll be logging them in as evidence.”
“Thank you, Steph.” Becca nodded to the kitchen. “Can you do one more thing before you leave?” She looked over at Silas and glared. “There’s apparently some wine and cheese in the kitchen. Any way you could take those too? Just in case.”
The crime scene tech nodded, then set to work photographing the kitchen. Becca returned her focus on Ceci.
“Ms. Palmer, I understand that Andrea had some kind of nervous breakdown a couple of days ago. Tore through a restaurant, raving about being chased by Death.” She glanced over at Silas and gave him a look to warn him from saying anything stupid. “Do you know anything about that?”
“Not much. I was at home watching my boyfriend’s kid when it happened. I didn’t hear anything about it until the next day when Andrea called asking me to pick her up from the hospital.”
“Hospital?” Silas asked. Becca cringed. She’d intentionally kept that piece of information from him. She was determined to hold as much back from him as she could until she decided whether she could trust him or not. The good news, to her, was that if he truly was the Grim Reaper, he didn’t seem to be omniscient.
“Yeah. Instead of arresting her, the cops Baker Acted her,” Ceci explained.
“Baker Act?”
“It’s where Florida law enforcement can forcibly hospitalize someone who’s a threat to themselves or others,” Becca told him. “It’s limited but can be very effective against suicidal or mentally deranged people.”
Oh, how I’d love to use that against you right now, Mr. Mot.
“Anyway, the cops, feeling she definitely fit the bill, sent her to University Medical Center,” Ceci sniffed. “The hospital held her overnight for observation. That was as long as they could hold her without a court order. After a while, she calmed down and was allowed to go home. That’s when she called me. But she wouldn’t talk about it with me at all. Said she was just too humiliated about the whole thing. I just drove her home and she went inside and locked everything up.”
“Okay, getting back to this Santero who supposedly cursed Ms. Alvarez.” Silas, who’d finally taken a seat in a reading chair across from her, leaned forward. “You don’t happen to know his name, do you?”
Ceci’s eyes widened. “Oh, uh…look, I don’t want to cause any trouble for him.”
“Why not?” Becca asked. “Looks like he’s a good suspect in your friend’s death. Why wouldn’t you want to give us his name?”
“Because that dude scares me. He scares a lot of people. Santeria isn’t the only thing he’s into.”
“I promise, Ms. Palmer. He won’t know where the information came from. We just need his name.”
The girl eyed them suspiciously for several uncomfortable seconds of hand-wringing. “Jacinto Garcia,” she finally said.
Becca sat up at the mention of his name. “Garcia? Are you sure?”
Ceci nodded while keeping her gaze steadily at her own feet.
“Who’s Jacinto Garcia?” Silas asked. “I mean, besides a death-curse-making evil Santero?”
“He’s bad news,” was Becca’s only reply.