She raised a brow. “I don’t disagree. The question is, how do we prove it?”
Morales’s voice rose over the music. “Yo, barkeep, turn up the tube, will ya?”
We both glanced over to see the bald guy behind the counter punch some buttons on the remote. The jukebox went silent and the TV over the pool tables got loud.
On the screen, Captain Eldritch stood at a podium addressing media. “As many of you know, our beloved mayor was murdered earlier today. His loss is a huge blow for this community and we extend our sincere condolences to Mrs. Owens and the mayor’s two sons, Chip and McKinley Owens.”
An inset picture on the screen showed the entire Owens family smiling together in front of a church. Nice touch, the church. I wondered if Skip Owens prayed to Jesus with the same mouth he used to suck Aphrodite’s cock.
“Obviously, bringing the perpetrator of this violent act to justice has become the sole focus of the BPD.”
“Yeah that’s just what Dionysus wanted, you idiot,” Morales yelled at the TV.
The captain adjusted his hat and looked directly in the camera. “I am pleased to report that less than an hour ago, we arrested Aphrodite Johnson, a notorious Hierophant of a sex magic coven with a long history of lewd behavior and violence.”
The picture-in-picture flared to life with footage of Eldritch himself escorting a bedraggled Aphrodite to a waiting squad car. I didn’t recognize the building they were in front of, which meant one of Aphrodite’s associates must have rolled over on the locations of the Hierophant’s safe houses. The female side of the hermaphrodite’s face had no makeup and the masculine right was covered in stubble, as if they’d dragged her out of bed.
Mez emitted a low whistle. “There’s going to be hell to pay once she’s cleared.”
“Let’s hope it’s not too soon,” Gardner said.
I frowned at her. “Why do you say that?”
“Because now Dionysus thinks the heat is off him for a little while. He’ll get cocky. Maybe make a mistake.”
“Let’s hope so. That asshole’s been one step ahead of us since this began.”
Gardner chugged the rest of her beer, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and smiled. “Then we’ll just have to make sure his next step is into a trap.”
Chapter Twenty-One
October 27
Waxing Gibbous
Two days later Morales and I were on our way out of the medical examiner’s office with a folder full of papers we weren’t supposed to have about Owens’s death. We’d spent a couple of days chasing down every possible lead on Dionysus. But so far we’d come up with a big fat goose egg. With each passing day Gardner was getting more and more pissed, which meant we were getting closer and closer to the edge of the law when it came to tracking down leads. Luckily the media circus surrounding Owens’s death and Aphrodite’s arrest was keeping the BPD too busy to pay attention to what we were doing.
Since Franklin is a tad touchy about things like cell phones going off in his morgue, I’d turned mine off when we arrived. But the instant we walked out with the illicit lab reports he’d given us, I fired up the phone again. A voice mail from Baba was waiting saying she couldn’t pick Danny up from school since she had to take Pen to a follow-up with her doctor. A sharp spike of guilt speared me. Poor Baba had been working double duty with both Danny and Pen so I couldn’t very well complain about the inconvenience. Still, stress was a constant aching burn in my gut, and the added complication ratcheted my cortisol a couple of notches.
I had Morales drop me off at my Jeep, Sybil. Before I got out, he said, “I’m going to go check in with Gardner and then see if I can get a bead on Aphrodite’s guard. Maybe he can be convinced to share some information about what they found at Dionysus’s apartment.”
“Take Shadi with you.”
He smirked. “You worried about me, Cupcake?”
“Nah. Just don’t trust you not to beat that guy’s ass when he lies to you.”
He chuckled. “Fair enough. Give me a shout once you get the kid settled and I’ll let you know where to meet up.”
Thirty minutes later I pulled up in front of Danny’s school. Despite the chilly air outside, my back was sweaty from sitting in traffic. I pulled up in front of the school with fifteen minutes left to spare before DUDE let out. Instead of sitting at the curb, I decided to go in and introduce myself to the teacher sponsoring the club. If he was cool, maybe I could arrange for the team to do a demonstration at an anti-dirty-magic rally or something. I knew Danny said they weren’t going to invite guest speakers, but I figured I could talk this Mr. Hart into it.
A woman I’d never met was working the front office, and she informed me that the club met in the library on the second floor. Over the years I’d been in the school several times both as a parent and to catch up with Pen. Even though a lot of the parents who sent their kids to Meadowlake could be snobby and exclusive once they found out Danny and I were both Adepts as well as lower middle class—wasn’t sure which ranked lower in their esteem—there were some cool ones, and I liked almost every teacher Danny had over the years. It helped that Pen was popular among the staff, and I knew she often smoothed things over for the kid.
The library was nothing like the one at the public school I’d attended in the Cauldron. My school basically had what amounted to a broom closet full of books. Mostly the shelves were taken up by musty-smelling encyclopedias and unused thesauruses. An ancient woman named Mrs. Strahan had been in charge of the “library.” She was nice, but basically ignored by the kids and staff.
I have to admit that back then I was so full of myself for being the heir apparent to the most powerful coven in the city that I didn’t think it was worth exerting much effort on book learning. It wasn’t until I enrolled in night school at Babylon Community College that I realized how deprived I’d been not growing up a reader. Now I read most nights before bed to unwind. Nothing literary or anything. Just cheap paperbacks where I knew the good guys would always win the day or the couple would live happily ever after.
But this library? Double doors opened up into a two-story temple to books. The main floor held the circulation desk, rows of computers and study carrels, and dozens and dozens of shelves of books. Steps led up to the second-floor, U-shaped balcony that held shelves so tall, you needed a ladder to reach the top. Mrs. Strahan would have peed her adult diapers to see this place.