The Once and Future Scream Queen: Marlene Ambrosia Mysteries Read online

Marlene didn’t know what to do after Artie’s arrest. Eating pizza didn’t seem like the right thing.

  She called Ganny, but her sister didn’t answer. So Marlene headed home. Cromwell was waiting for her on the lawn. He looked like he’d been waiting for a long time. Marlene let Jesse out of the car. Her first thought had been to take him to the pound but Jesse had pleaded with her to take him with her, saying he didn’t have a home and would be of great assistance to Merlin.

  Cromwell puffed his chest out at the sight of the dog. “And who is this?”

  “Cromwell, meet Jesse. Jesse, Cromwell.”

  The dog sauntered over casually. When he got within ten feet, Cromwell took wing and got into a tree limb.

  “Dogs and owls do not mix,” Cromwell said.

  “I’m not going to eat you,” Jesse said. “I don’t like fowl.”

  Cromwell ignored the dog and turned his big owl eyes to Marlene. “The Once and Future King is in trouble.”

  Marlene nodded. “They arrested him for the murder of Gwen O’Vear.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Marlene held out a palm. “I have no idea yet. This just happened.”

  “The Merlin always has a plan.”

  Marlene lost it. “Then maybe he should be here. I’m not The Merlin. I’m Marlene. Okay?”

  “But …” Cromwell looked crestfallen.

  “Like you said, nothing has happened the way it should. I was supposed to have my powers at birth but they only showed up the other day. I just found out my father wasn’t my father and my real father was insane. Or not.”

  “What?”

  She didn’t feel like going into it right now so she ignored his question. “I’m not a planner, I’m not a strategist, I’m not calculating. I feel my way through situations and understand what people should do, even though I have no idea how I understand that. I just do. I can’t explain it to your satisfaction, let alone mine.”

  Cromwell’s beak opened but no words came out.

  Jesse said, “Do you two need a minute alone?”

  Marlene ignored the dog. “I am not Merlin. And he is not me. I’m Marlene. You’re going to have to accept that if this is going to work. Is that understood?”

  Cromwell’s eyes widened and his beak opened, and it almost looked like he was smiling.

  “That is more like it,” he said.

  Marlene’s anger dissolved and she broke up laughing. “This is really absurd, you know. I’m talking to an owl and a dog right now, this morning I used magic, and then—that reminds me. I need to ask you about something.”

  “What?” Cromwell asked.

  “First come off the tree. Jesse isn’t going to hurt you.” Marlene looked down at the dog, who sat obediently on his haunches. “Isn’t that right, Jesse?”

  Jesse barked. Then realized he hadn’t spoken. “That means yes.”

  “Thank you, Jesse.” She looked back up at the owl. “Now Cromwell?”

  The owl tentatively dropped off the branch and swooped down, giving a wide berth to the dog. “The others would like to meet you, Marlene.”

  “Now?”

  The owl nodded.

  “Okay. And after that, I need to talk to you about what happened. After I used magic.”

  Cromwell’s eyes bulged again. He knew without her telling, what had happened.

  One-by-one, Cromwell presented the other animals. Jesse sat next to her, tongue wagging, while they came out. He didn’t threaten a single one.

  First, a snake slithered through the grass and hissed out his name: Steve.

  Then, a mole tunneled up out of the ground. Robert.

  Then, a skunk. Alan.

  Next, what looked like a gopher. Carter.

  More and more came. More names than she could remember. There were so many. She greeted them all warmly, thanking them for keeping an eye out for danger and protecting her against evil forces. She made sure to introduce Jesse to them all as well. None of them seemed to trust the newcomer much, but they didn’t come out and say it. She’d have to write all the names down.

  When the introductions were over, just Cromwell and Jesse remained. Marlene convinced Cromwell to go inside against his better judgment. Jesse ran inside excitedly.

  She closed the front door and immediately began opening the windows. Cromwell couldn’t bonk his head against more glass. She needed him. Especially right now.

  “Tell me what happened,” he said, rather ominously.

  Marlene sat in her old recliner, kicked the leg rest up, and Jesse sat on the floor beside her. “Artie was driving and hit Jesse in the road.”

  “Go on,” Cromwell said, though Marlene could tell he’d already figured out the important details.

  “Jesse was going to …”

  “You can say it.” Jesse eagerly thumped his tail on the floor.

  Marlene nodded. “Jesse was going to die. I didn’t want that to happen, so I went over and just helped him.”

  “How?” Cromwell asked.

  “I don’t know.” Marlene shook her head. “That, believe it or not, is the craziest thing. I have no idea how I helped Jesse. I just did.”

  Cromwell nodded. “You are right, Marlene. You differ from The Merlin. You act on intuition. But to defeat the Dark One and Mal A. Gant, you will need more than intuition.”

  “I know,” she admitted. “Anyway, I brought Jesse back and next thing I know, I pass out and I’m falling into—”

  “A darkness unlike anything you’ve ever seen.”

  “So you know what happened to me?”

  “Yes.” He nodded gravely. All gestures owls made were grave. “It is a place worse than death. The Void.”

  “The Void,” she repeated. That was exactly how she had thought of it while she was there.

  “It’s an emptiness, devoid of anything good.”

  “It wasn’t completely empty.” Marlene shuddered at the memory. “There was a woman there.”

  “After all this time,” Cromwell said.

  “She said she’s been trapped there a thousand—”

  “More like fifteen hundred years,” Cromwell said.

  Jesse put his head on his paws and seemed to shrink, as the subject scared him.

  Cromwell continued. “To her, though, it would seem much, much longer. Time moves very slowly there, it is part of the torment. It is an exile worse than death.”

  “What happened?”

  “Her name is Nimue. The Merlin cast her into the Void all those years ago.”

  “Why?” Marlene was shocked. It seemed a very cruel and unusual punishment. Though she was against the death penalty, even death seemed preferable to that kind of torture.

  “She was his apprentice and later betrayed him. And she had grown too powerful to kill. It was the only thing Merlin could do.”

  “God.” Marlene shook her head at the idea. “How did I end up there?”

  “You don’t know how to use your powers yet. You probably nearly killed yourself in saving this dog.”

  Jesse barked. “My name is Jesse.”

  Cromwell went on. “When you use your power, you have to tap into the other worlds.”

  This was too much. “Other worlds?”

  Cromwell didn’t explain. “This exposed you to dangers you can’t imagine. The Void has a strong pull, one you must avoid at all costs. The thin strand of life force holding you to this world must have nearly snapped and the Void took you in.”

  “But how did I get out?”

  Jesse barked.

  “Yes, yes,” Cromwell said, grudgingly. “Jesse saved you. Life force is your strongest connection to this world.”

  She remembered feeling something slide across her face. When she’d woken up, Jesse had been licking her. It wasn’t Nimue that had touched her cheek—it had been Jesse.

  “By licking my face, Jesse saved me?” Marlene asked.

  Jesse thumped his tail again.

  “It’s not that simple, but yes.” Cromwell looked
toward the front door. “Someone is coming.”

  He swooped through the window in the living room. Marlene hurried to the front door, Jesse right by her side and looked through the peephole.

  It was Bors.

  Great.

  ***

  Bors stepped inside and took his notepad out. Tonight he was wearing a different, but just as unkempt suit, with a tie that didn’t match the suit or the shirt really.

  He said, “I heard you and Artie have been spending a lot of time together recently.”

  “We’re friends.” Marlene knew it was more than a friendship, though. In their few short days together, she had gotten to see the real Artie Ryan and was beginning to believe in her destiny. She wanted to help him. Especially now that he’d been accused of murder.

  “Friends. Right.”

  She found it a little strange that Bors had arrested Artie before coming here tonight. It seemed like putting the cart before the horse. If she had information he needed, Bors should have questioned her first and made his case bulletproof before slapping the iron bracelets on Artie.

  Why did he come now?

  Marlene was about to modify her opinion of Bors once again. On the morning of the murder, she’d been convinced he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. Then yesterday, she’d thought it was part of an act. Tonight, he’d come here after arresting Artie, which seemed really stupid.

  But she didn’t want to jump to any conclusions. There could be something else at work here.

  “You weren’t always friends, though. That’s a recent development,” Bors said.

  “Our offices are across the street and we’ve met up a few times over the last couple of days. That’s all.”

  “Right,” he said dismissively. “But didn’t you agree to run his next campaign?”

  Marlene almost said yes, then thought better of it. It wasn’t public knowledge that Artie was going to challenge the mayor this fall in the general election unless Artie had mentioned it after the arrest. But that didn’t seem likely. Bors was just fishing with that question, and she didn’t want to play her hand yet. He was smarter than he let on. She had to remember that.

  “I don’t know where you got that idea. I hate politics,” she said. “Artie is one of my clients. I’m trying to help him. That’s all. And I can’t believe you think he did this.”

  “I don’t think anything, Marlene.”

  “He didn’t do it. Artie wouldn’t kill Gwen.”

  “Is that what he told you to say?”

  “Why would I lie for him?”

  He shrugged and pretended to think about it, like he hadn’t planned his entire series of questions out in advance. “Maybe you don’t want to see him get in trouble.”

  “Gwen was my client and a friend. I wouldn’t cover up for anybody if they killed her.”

  “You wouldn’t cover up for him, right.” Bors scratched something else down on his pad. When he looked back up at her, his face was stony. “Maybe you don’t know one way or the other that he did it but you don’t think he did. Like you said, he’s your friend. Right?”

  “He didn’t do it.”

  Bors nodded. “He was the only person to admit he saw Gwen’s car.”

  “To admit it, yes,” Marlene said. “That just means he’s honest, unlike someone else.”

  Bors chuckled. “Unlike who?”

  Marlene didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t expected Bors to show up and start questioning her tonight. Cromwell was right. She needed to get better at thinking strategically, especially if she was going to help Artie out of this mess.

  “Unlike Tom Gelder, for one,” Marlene said.

  “We checked his tapes. He didn’t do it. And your mystery man? He doesn’t appear.”

  “But he was there. And Gwen went to talk to Tom Gelder. She might have walked right by the guy.”

  “Suuuuure. Marlene, Artie is the only one that makes sense.”

  “Really?” Marlene said. “Because just last night, you thought I did it. What convinced you I didn’t?”

  He didn’t answer her question directly. “He was in Special Forces and seeing a shrink for PTSD.”

  “What?” Marlene was baffled. Artie hadn’t mentioned anything of the sort.

  “Yeah, he saw a lot of bad stuff over there. Stuff that messes with a man’s head real bad.”

  “So he murdered Gwen O’Vear because he has PTSD?” Marlene shook her head. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Right. Because people with PTSD do reasonable things.”

  “Then you must have PTSD, because it’s unreasonable to arrest, let alone suspect, Artie of killing Gwen.”

  “They have a history.” Bors put his notepad away. “Did you know they had a kid?”

  “What …” Marlene couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  “Yeah. Gwen didn’t tell him and gave the boy up for adoption. She was planning on telling Artie about it. Maybe that’s what she did that morning, and Artie flipped out.”

  “How do you know she was planning on telling Artie?”

  “She told the mayor.”

  That little something went click in the back of her head again. And finally, Marlene understood a little bit of what had been bothering her.

  “You’ve been getting a lot of information from the mayor that’s all hearsay,” Marlene said. “Last night you suspected me of the murder. Then this morning, Artie presents his budget which shines a spotlight on what the mayor has done historically, putting him in a very awkward position. A few short hours later, you’re arresting Artie Ryan for a murder he wouldn’t commit in a million years. I can’t help but think the budget and the arrest are connected.”

  “How dare you.” Bors put a lot of menace in his voice. “I’m not the mayor’s lackey. I do an honest job.”

  “I didn’t say you were his lackey.” Marlene folded her arms. “But he could have steered you in the direction he wanted.”

  “I’m nobody’s fool!” Bors yelled, very defensively. “I’m the lead detective in this town.”

  Marlene shook her head. “You’ve got the wrong guy, Bors. And I think deep down you know it.”

  “If you’re covering up for him, I’m going to find out.” Bors balled his fists. “I came here to offer you a deal. Tell me the truth and I wouldn’t come after you for being an accessory after the fact. But now there is no deal. Now I’m going to get you too, Marlene.”

  Twenty-Four

  The next morning, Marlene’s phone woke her early.

  “Hello?”

  “Marlene Ambrosia?” said a familiar voice, but one she couldn’t place.

  “Who’s calling?”

  “Terrence Markison. Artie’s retained me to represent him in the criminal proceeding.”

  Marlene was still trying to come to terms with the arrest. Now his attorney was calling her first thing the following morning to begin preparations for Artie’s defense. She couldn’t believe it.

  “Long time,” Terrence said, a bit stiffly.

  Yeah, long time. If she’d fallen and broken a leg in the hallway between class, he would have stepped right over her.

  “Yes.”

  “Artie told me to call you.” Terrence’s voice changed, and she realized he was coming off speaker phone. “He said you could help.”

  “In his defense?”

  “Yes,” Terrence said, his patience already starting to wear thin. So, the guy literally hadn’t changed in the last twelve years. He was the type who thought everybody a moron and himself a genius.

  “I wouldn’t know the first thing about building a case.”

  “That’s what I figured,” Terrence said nonchalantly, and not like he’d just kind of insulted her. “Artie said you were going to say that, but he told me for whatever reason to keep pushing.”

  God, this guy was grating. Marlene thought it over. “Can you get your hands on Tom Gelder’s surveillance video? I’d like to check it out.”

  “I’ve already aske
d for it. Should have it today. I’ll have my assistant make a copy for you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Anything else?” Terrence said like he didn’t expect any more help from her.

  “Is it true that Gwen and Artie had a child together?”

  Terrence sucked in a breath, like she was just wasting his time. “Yes.”

  “But they only know this because the mayor says so, right?”

  “Wrong. They’ve located the birth certificate.”

  “Artie is listed as the father?”

  “He is.”

  Marlene couldn’t believe it. What must it have been like to find out he had a child all these years?

  “How is Artie?” Marlene asked.

  “How do you expect he is? He’s been wrongfully accused of murdering an old girlfriend, the circumstantial evidence points in his direction, and he just found out he has a son.”

  “Terrence, I’m just trying to help.”

  “Then start being helpful.” He barked out orders to his assistant, then addressed her again. “Think of something useful and call me. Until then, I have to get moving on this. Goodbye, Marlene.”

  He hung up without a thank you. Not that Marlene was surprised. For a moment, she regretted that Artie had retained Terrence Markison as his attorney because the guy was such an overwhelming jerk. But then she thought better of it. Terrence was probably a very good attorney because he was such an overwhelming jerk. The two seemed to go hand-in-hand.

  Jesse followed her downstairs. She let him out and he did his business as far away from the house as he could. At least he was considerate. When he came back, she realized he was probably hungry and that if she was going to keep him, she’d need to buy some dog food. And a bowl. And probably a leash. And he probably needed to go to the vet. No, definitely.

  “Have you been living as a stray?” she asked.

  Jesse bowed his head like he was embarrassed. “I had to get away from the man. He wasn’t nice.”

  Marlene’s heart broke. “I’m sorry, Jesse. Don’t worry. You can stay here with me. Now, I don’t know the first thing about dogs but I’ll do my best. I’ll get some food for you later today.”

  “Got any bacon?” His nose started twitching and he followed it right to her refrigerator.