PENITENCE: An Andi Comstock Supernatural Mystery, Book 2 (95,893 words) (25 page)

We were exhausted,
Marianne said.
We’d just spent fifteen hours flying and we wanted nothing more than to climb into bed and get some sleep.

The meeting time was less than half and hour away, so we decided to get it over with.

“Did you know why he wanted to see you?”

Seth grunted.
No, but we gathered it was about the investment property in Dubai. We’d just spent two days looking it over and we weren’t as convinced as his partners that is was a good deal.

“What did Clem think?”

We weren’t sure
, Marianne said.

We’d always dealt directly with him on our investments, but this time, Benz and Giustina came at us directly, without Clem’s knowledge.
He belted out a grunt.
Did they think we wouldn’t discuss it with the person we’d been working with for years?

“Years?” Andi parroted.

Marianne went on, as if she hadn’t heard her.
We got the impression they were circumventing him, didn’t we, Seth?

Yes. I suppose that’s why we didn’t think it unusual for Clem to set up a meeting with us.

“I thought you’d had a falling out with Clem over another investment deal.”

Well, yes, we did,
Seth said,
but that was a minor disagreement, instigated, I might add, by Clem’s partners. We patched that up long ago.

“How did Clem react when you spoke with him?”

That’s the thing now, isn’t it?
Marianne asked.
We remember the doorbell ringing, but after that, everything is a blank.

Andi mulled that over. “Did you know that Clem had hired someone to kill his wife because he thought she was having an affair?”

Seth said,
We might have got a whiff of that story since we… well, since we, died.

Marianne uttered a small sound of distress.
They had a beautiful memorial service for us this morning, but it was still so hard on the children. We’ve always been a terribly close family, you know.

Andi didn’t, and it broke her heart to hear what she could only term as reverse grief coming from the Deacons. “I’m so sorry for what’s happened to you.”

Can you find some way to tell our children that we’re going to be all right? That we have nothing to fear from where we’re going?

How like a mother to want to comfort her children, even from the other side. Andi considered how she could do that when she wasn’t willing to bring any more people into loop of who knew she could hear the dead. “If I can figure out a way, I will,” she promised.

You’re a good girl, Andi. I know this presents a challenge for you, but I know you’ll find the proper means to do it.

Maybe you shouldn’t have asked,
Seth chastised gently.
Andi’s right to worry about how many people know she can hear folks like us. People will start to think she’s crazy.

You’re right, of course. I withdraw my request, Andi
.

“No need to do that. If I can ease their grief, I’ll do it. Is there anything you can think of that might help me figure out how to track down this killer Clem hired?”

Have you asked Clem?
Seth asked.

“Repeatedly. We know the killer’s work moniker, which is The Liquidator, and the name he goes by, Dex Moran, seems to be an alias. We also know that he plans to kill Denise with a gun, but beyond that, we’re hamstrung.”

When does he plan to kill her?
Marianne asked.

“He was given a window, which ends at midnight tonight.”

Oh, dear.

Everything she knew about the hit ran through Andi’s brain.

You got a text saying the hit could not be cancelled, even though Clem is dead?
Seth asked, his tone astonished.
And the killer claims Clem paid him in full, but Clem denies it?

Unsurprised that her thoughts were being read again, even though they had traveled at the speed of light through her brain, Andi said, “That about sums it up.”

How’s poor Denise handling it?
Marianne wanted to know.

“Like a trouper,” Andi said. “We’ve been wondering how she can remain so calm in the face of death.”

Did you ask Clem?

“I did, but as usual, he wasn’t entirely forthcoming.”

That doesn’t sound like Clem at all,
Marianne fretted.
I’ve never known him to be less than honest. He was completely forthright about his partners when we asked him about the Dubai opportunity.

“When was that?”

Last month. You tell the story, Seth.

Not much to tell, really. Clem was out of sorts because he couldn’t find his phone, so we caught him at a bad time. Giustina walked in with it just as we finished telling Clem about the Dubai deal and he…well, if you’ll pardon my explicit descriptive, Clem reamed Vince a new asshole.

Andi made a mental note to get a bead on how the forensic accountant was coming along with the company books. “Benz and Giustina are trying to force Denise into a sale of Clem’s share of the business.”

Marianne made another sniffing noise.
She’d be well rid of them, in my opinion, but I suppose they’re trying to take advantage of her.

“In a major way.” She debated asking the next question.

Don’t hold back,
Seth urged.

“Do you know if Clem was involved in an affair with Helen MacLeary?”

Who’s that?
Marianne asked.

Andi sighed. “The wife of a neighbor who Denise battled on a land-use issue.”

Clem made a
tsking
sound.

Does she have beautiful silver hair?
Marianne asked, her voice hesitant.

Andi had only seen one picture of Helen MacLeary on the Internet. “Yes. Did you know her?”

I….
Marianne faltered.
I’m not sure. There’s something familiar…an image in my head…I don’t know. I can’t quite grasp it. I’m sorry, Andi.

Seth went on.
One thing you have to know about Clem, Andi, is that he liked to jerk people around, but it was more in teasing way than anything mean or vindictive. For the most part, he was a straight shooter. He loved that little gal of his and he was proud of everything she did. I can’t even count on two hands the number of times he bragged about her and the kids to me and Marianne.

Seth’s right, Andi. There’s no way Clem would have fooled around with…another woman.

Andi wondered if there was some significance to that slight pause.

Going back to one of your previous questions, Andi
, Marianne said,
I think I know why Denise remains calm over the threat to her life. It’s simple, really. She’s a woman of determination when she’s battling a foe. Her emotions get put on hold and she adopts

a steadfast persona to the world. I didn’t know her as well as I knew Clem, but I asked her once, when she was involved in that dispute with the surveyor, how she managed to remain stalwart when she was in battle. Her response was, ‘Because I have to.’

“Thank you for remembering that. It explains a lot.”

I think you may be a lot like Denise in that regard, Andi.

Andi wouldn’t have compared herself to Denise under any circumstances, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t adopt Denise’s motto.
Because I have to
said it all.

She wished the Deacons Godspeed and thanked them for their straightforward answers.

You’re welcome,
Marianne said.

Seth added,
Find the bastards who did this to us, will you, Andi?

Andi didn’t know if that was possible, but she said, “I’ll do my damnedest.”

Andi scribbled dow
n
the transcription of her conversation with the Deacons. She also jotted down a couple of notes to herself:
Davis MacLeary cremated?
What is Helen to Clem??

Jack called before she had a chance to text him. “I’m downstairs. Feel like meeting up with Riley and me for a coffee?”

Andi knew the two of them weren’t up for an afternoon of chit-chat and crumpets and she could do with some fresh air. “Be right down.”

Five minutes later, they arrived at Java Josie’s with Father Riley only seconds behind them. Jack insisted on buying a round of whatever anyone wanted. Andi chose a slice of lemon bread to go with her latté. Father Riley asked for coffee and a jumbo chocolate chip cookie. Jack remained at the counter while Andi and the priest wandered toward a secluded table in the back, next to the window.

Jack arrived with their drinks and eats. Fortunately, they were there late enough in the afternoon that the place was virtually empty. “How’d it go?”

Andi gave them a review, looking at her journal if she wanted to quote either Seth or Marianne verbatim.

When she’d finished, Jack tapped his index finger against the table top. “That was a long interrogation for getting so little information.”

“It wasn’t an interrogation, Jack Webb.”

Jack grinned. “Should I call it an interview, Barbara Walters?”

Ever the mediator, Father Riley suggested, “Okay, you two, how about just calling it a conversation?”

“I did get something from it,” Andi said, smirking at Jack.

“Oh, yeah? What?”

“Davis MacLeary figures into this somehow.”

Jack reached for her journal. “How so?”

Andi relinquished it with a shrug. “I’m not sure yet. Riley, would you mind asking Phil to check his records to see if MacLeary was cremated, and if so, the date and time?”

The priest’s eyes lit up. “I smell a breakthrough coming,” he said, pulling out his phone. He stood and moved toward the door.

Andi and Jack tracked his progress as he took his call outside.

“You think he may have said something to you in passing that you didn’t find odd?”

Andi swung her head to face him. “If he was actually cremated, I guess it’s possible. He supposedly killed himself, right? Can you check the file and see if there was any question about whether or not it was suicide?”

“It’d be better if I talked to the responding officers. They don’t put feelings down on paper.”

“Point taken. You know, the Deacons were adamant that Clem wouldn’t have had an affair….” Something clicked in Andi’s brain. She took a moment to process it.

Jack leaned closer and demanded in a whisper, “Now what?”

Andi took back her journal and scanned their final comments. “One of the last things Marianne said was, ‘There’s no way Clem would have fooled around with another woman.’” Her eyes came up to meet his. “At the time, something about the way she said it bothered me. I even made a note to myself about Clem having an affair, despite what she’d said.”

“Babe, you’re going to have to cut to the chase here. I’m having a hard time connecting your dots.”

Andi read the statement aloud again. “‘There’s no way Clem would have fooled around with another woman.’
Another woman
, Jack. Why didn’t she just say, there wasn’t any way Clem would have fooled around, period?” She narrowed her eyes, thinking. “I remember now! She paused slightly before she said
another woman
.”

Jack made an impatient, forward-movement motion with his hand.

Andi’s voice dropped a notch. “What if he was having an affair with…another man?”

Jack’s jaw dropped.

“It might explain why Davis killed himself.”

“That’s really a stretch, Andi.”

“Is it? Two married men their age come out of the closet…maybe one of them couldn’t live with it.”

“In this day and age? Acceptance is pretty much the standard anymore, isn’t it?”

Andi chewed on her lip while she considered that. “To some degree, but we’re talking about two men, both with wives, one with kids. Maybe both with kids.”

Jack pressed back in his chair. “I see your point. They wouldn’t necessarily want to disrupt the status quo, so to speak.”

“Exactly. Both were successful businessmen and by all accounts, happy in their marriages.”

“Still, we can’t jump to conclusions based purely on speculation.”

“Speculation about what?” Father Riley inquired, seating himself.

Jack gave him a rundown of Andi’s supposition.

Father Riley listened in silence and when Jack finished speaking, he glanced at Andi. “You were right to question whether or not Davis MacLeary was cremated, Andi. It occurred on December thirtieth, in the afternoon. I also confirmed Clem Naylor’s cremation.”

Andi gave him a grateful look before she paged back in her journal looking for the December 30. She read in silence. With her lips sucked in, she looked up.

Jack asked, “What did he say?”

Andi swallowed the lump of emotion in her throat. “‘This isn’t exactly the way I thought I’d be welcoming the new year, Andi. I guess things don’t always turn out the way we think they will, though, do they?’ I responded with ‘No, they don’t,’ and he said, ‘Can I offer you some advice, kid? Live your life with no regrets. Be sure you’re making the right choices. Keep things on the up-and-up. Use your noggin, Andi.’”

Andi coughed and reached for her water glass, taking a long swallow before she continued. “‘What’s right for you may not be right for the ones you love.’ I noted that he made some kind of strangled sound here, then he went on to say, ‘I made one helluva miscalculation, all because of something I saw on someone’s goddamned phone. Now I’m not there for my wife, and she’s going to do something she shouldn’t.’ Here I noted that he made a moaning sound, which I described as a sound of regret, then he went on to say, “If only she’d understood that my carnal needs didn’t affect my love for her.”

Father Riley’s expression was one of compassion. “He was ambiguous and blunt at the same time, wasn’t he? You couldn’t have remotely discerned anything from his comments, Andi.”

Unable to restrain the bitterness she felt, Andi said, “Couldn’t I? His last statement alone should have at least garnered a response from me. Something simple like, ‘Is it something you want to talk about?’ would’ve done, even though I didn’t have any desire to hear the intimate details of his sex life.”

Jack reached over and gave her hand a squeeze. “Don’t go jumping on the I-should-have-known train.”

“That’s easy for you to say, because you’re not the one hearing voices. I take this seriously, Jack. I can’t help it, it’s just the way I’m wired. Damn! I should have pursued what he was saying!”

“I know, but—”

“You don’t know!” she shot back, working to keep her cool. “There’s not a person alive who will ever really know.”

“No one’s disputing that,” Father Riley cut in, “but Jack’s right. Don’t go second-guessing yourself or coming up with what-if lists in your head. You’ll just drive yourself crazy.”

“Maybe I’m already crazy!” Andi snarled back. She shook her head, filled with self-loathing for speaking to him that way. “I’m sorry, Riley.”

“No need to apologize, Andi. I understand where you’re coming from, but think about this for a moment. Only two deceased souls have asked for your help and you’ve obliged both of them. Davis MacLeary didn’t want your help because nothing could be done to rectify the situation, or at least, he apparently didn’t think so.”

“Father Riley is right, sweetheart. MacLeary didn’t ask for your help, did he?”

Andi considered that in silence and realized they both had a point. “Clem, I know you can hear me. Show yourself. Right now.”

Jack and Father Riley shared a shocked look with each other.

A moment later, the rank smoky odor she associated with Clem surrounded her.

You can’t leave anything alone, can you, Andi?

“So, it’s true.”

It’s not what you’re thinking.

“But it was enough to make Davis take his own life.”

Here’s how it went down. He and Denise were at each other’s throats constantly over all that land-use crap. Helen and I got together trying to devise a plan to get them to ease up on each other. The four of us used to be good friends before Denise became a crusader, you know?
He produced a long, shuddery sigh.
I don’t know how it happened, but Helen and I, well…one thing led to another and the next thing I knew, we were kissing and making our way toward the bedroom. Davis came home unexpectedly. He knew I was there because my car was in the driveway. I split to the bathroom and she greeted him at the front door.

Andi remained silent, her thoughts anything but kind. For a change, absorbed with his story, Clem made no snide comment about what she was thinking.

Helen told him she was on her way to the grocery store. She grabbed her purse and took off, leaving Davis and me alone. I expected the guy to break my nose when I came out of the bathroom, but instead, he offers me a drink and says he’s tired of feuding with Denise. Apparently, he’d uncovered some information that substantiated her claims. He was worried about how he was going to look in the community, especially after the fiasco about the city hall building. Not only would he come off as some kind of idiot, but it had the potential to destroy his business this time if his licensing was revoked. He started to cry.

Clem paused. Andi wrote as fast as she could in her journal.

After a few seemingly contemplative moments, Clem went on.
I’ve never had to console a crying man before. I didn’t know what to do. We were standing in the middle of the kitchen, so I put my drink on the counter and grabbed him in a man-hug. After a bit, something changed. He started rubbing my back and pressing against me like he was my wife, or something. I have to admit, I was kind of frozen in shock…I never in a million years expected my body to respond.

He went silent long enough for Andi to grow impatient.

I don’t know if I meant to turn away when he kissed me, or if I welcomed it. I had all these strange feelings going through me.

Andi glanced from Jack to Father Riley. Both watched her with questioning gazes. “Go on.”

Fifteen minutes earlier, Helen had almost seduced me into the bedroom and now Davis was doing the same thing. We made it to the bed before I came to my senses. I told him I needed to leave, to have some space to think before things went further. He apologized profusely, said nothing like that had ever happened to him before.

Andi envisioned the two of them together. Both good-looking, fit, forty-somethings attracted to an indefinable quality in the other. Both married to a woman they purported to love. But cheating was cheating, wasn’t it?

I high-tailed it out of there, Andi. I was married, for God’s sake. I loved my wife and I’d nearly cheated on her with both Helen and Davis in the space of thirty minutes.

That answered the cheating question. “What happened after that?”

I went straight home and took my wife to bed. It was the best sex we’ve ever had, bar none.

TMI. How did cops and priests do it every day, hearing the worst people had to offer to explain away what they’d done? Some annoyed piece of her snapped, “Was that guilt or excitement eating at you?”

Maybe a little bit of both. I never once considered that I could be attracted to another man. I’ve always found homosexuality to be repugnant, if you want to the know the truth. It just wasn’t in my book of plays.

“Davis apparently didn’t feel the same way.”

I don’t know. Remember, he’d just told me he’d never done anything like that before.
Clem paused again, then said,
He approached me a couple times after that, but I’d had time to think about it, to consider the repercussions of my actions, to decide if that was really the life I wanted. It wasn’t.

“Did Davis feel the same way?”

He wasn’t sure, either, but he said he had strong feelings for me and he needed to find out if they meant anything or if he was just having a guy-crush.

“Did you believe him when he said it was his first foray into…you know?”

Clem grunted.
No, he and Helen belong to a couples-swapping group. The kind where they put the car keys in a bowl by the front door? The guy draws a key and that’s who he leaves the party with? According to Davis, they’d even done a three-way with another woman, and one four-way and that got him to thinking, according to him, obsessively, about having a male partner to himself. Me.

“Thinking about something is not the same as doing it. When did that happen?”

Last November.

“And when was the last time he came on to you?”

The day before he killed himself.

“Did you tell Denise about it?”

No. I didn’t want her to think differently of me because I’d kissed Davis and….