Page 23 of Dead to Rites

Chapter 6

Secrets

My phone was driving me nuts. I’d overslept — no big surprise, considering I hadn’t gotten to bed until almost two. Hazel had taken one look at my face when I walked in the door and asked me what was wrong, so I’d told her the whole terrible story about finding Father Frank’s body in the men’s restroom. Rather than ask a lot of questions, though, she’d only listened sympathetically, said it was a tragedy to lose someone so young…only my great-aunt would look at someone in their mid-sixties and call them “young”…and then made a cryptic comment about something bothering him over the past few months.

When I’d pressed her, she’d only said, “I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me anything, but when you’ve known someone for as long as I knew Father Frank, you can tell when something’s on their mind.”

I’d had to leave it there, because she’d told me crisply that it was far too late for me to be up, not when I had no idea what tomorrow might hold, and then she’d disappeared. Usually, she didn’t do things like that and walked from room to room like a normal person, but I supposed vanishing was something else she kept in her ghost toolkit and deployed at strategic times, like when I was trying to get more information out of her.

So I’d dragged myself upstairs, did a cursory face wash and moisturizer application, and brushed my teeth, then basically collapsed into bed.

Now it was almost ten. I’d missed three texts from Roz, two from Marco, and an actual phone call from Detective Ruiz, as well as three increasingly agitated texts from Celeste, who apparently had set up a Google alert for all things Prescott and had been greeted that morning with the information that a local priest had been bludgeoned to death in my bar.

Even though all of those messages had varying degrees of urgency, I knew I needed to contact Celeste first, or she’d just keep bugging me.

Before I even had a chance to say hello, though, she launched right into it.

“I’m driving up there tonight.”

“No, you’re not,” I said calmly. “Don’t you have a gig tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow night,” she replied. “There’s no reason why I can’t go up there and stay with you and then leave tomorrow afternoon sometime.”

On paper, that sounded logical enough, since Prescott was only an hour and a half away from Phoenix, depending on where in the Valley of the Sun you were trying to go. But I also knew there was a lot of prep work involved in most Voodoo Dollies gigs — they had elaborate sets and costumes and turned the whole thing into what felt like a scaled-down Broadway show rather than a gothabilly gig in some random bar — and having her take that much time to drive all over the place wasn’t a good idea at all.

“I’m fine,” I said, then blurted, because I hadn’t had any caffeine yet and not all neurons were firing, “It’s not like I’m alone here.”

She pounced on that comment right away. “What do you mean, you’re not alone?”

Oh, crap. Obviously, I couldn’t tell her that I had Hazel here with me, so I amended, knowing I sounded like an idiot, “I have Chauncey.”

Celeste made a scoffing sound. “That dog couldn’t take down a five-year-old. What if whoever killed this priest guy comes after you next?”

A thought that had wandered into my mind during the wee hours of the night, even though I’d done my best to tell it to take a hike. “I doubt that’s going to happen,” I said calmly. “The police don’t know anything yet, but I don’t think this had anything to do with the bar. There’s no reason in the world to make me a target.”

I recalled then how Detective Ruiz had asked me about the inheritance, and how he’d come close to hinting that he wasn’t sure I was as innocent as I looked.

What if someone really did have it in for the bar?

No, that didn’t make any sense. If someone actually wanted to cause trouble for me, then they could just report me for a liquor license issue or a health code violation. There was absolutely no reason to murder an innocent priest in the men’s restroom when there were all kinds of other ways a person could make my life miserable.

Also, Hazel had said last night that something had been bothering Father Frank for quite a while. I wished he’d confided in her, because then I’d have something concrete to go on, but whatever it was, it seemed to be a problem that predated my arrival in Prescott by several weeks, maybe longer.

“Besides,” I went on, since I could tell Celeste was wavering, “I’m never alone at Copper State. I have Marco and Roz and Mason and Alix. There’s always at least two people around, sometimes three.”

A long pause, and I knew I’d scored a point. “Still….”

“Why don’t you come up late on Sunday afternoon, if you really want to check on things?” I asked. “I have to work, but we close at six on Sundays, and Mondays are usually quiet.”

“Okay,” she said, although I could still hear the reluctance in her voice, the way she wanted to keep pushing even though she understood deep down that there really wasn’t any point. “If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure,” I said firmly. “Why don’t you get here around six-thirty on Sunday? I’ll be home by then, and we can order takeout and watch something completely stupid on TV.”

Another pause. Then she said, “Okay, it’s a date. Please tell me you have streaming in that big antique where you’re living.”

I didn’t, mostly because Hazel didn’t seem to have been interested in sitting on the couch and vegging out to Netflix for hours and hours. But I had internet, and there was a Best Buy about ten minutes away. I’d go get an Apple TV or something and then log in to the accounts I already had set up. Celeste would never have to know that I’d had to scramble to get everything working before she arrived.

“Sure,” I lied. It was only a teeny little lie, though, so I figured the universe couldn’t give me too much grief over that. “See you Sunday at six-thirty.”