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

  She felt Jesse’s tongue on her cheek and she woke with a start. Cold sand on her back. The rotten smell of the lake still there, but not as bad as before. She had probably just gotten used to the stench.

  “Marlene! That was great!” Jesse said, his paws on her stomach.

  Marlene jerked upright and looked around. Cromwell hobbled over.

  “That was incredibly stupid,” the owl said. “But it worked, by Mithras. It worked.”

  “What did you do?” Jesse asked.

  Marlene got up and turned around. The Dark One was sprawled on the sand behind her, moaning and just regaining consciousness.

  “I’ll explain later.” Marlene looked at the owl. “Is he …?”

  “Oh yeah.” Jesse barked. “I already bit him on the leg, and the arm, and other leg, and maybe the other arm too. He’s alive for sure.”

  The Dark One groaned again.

  Marlene nearly collapsed as she hurried over to him. Her head was spinning. She sensed Cromwell come up behind her.

  “You nearly died.”

  “On purpose,” Marlene said. “I gave him my life force to make him mortal.”

  “I would never have thought that would work,” Cromwell said. “How did you know to do that?”

  “I didn’t.” Marlene kneeled next to the Dark One. His chest was barely rising and falling. “But it made sense.”

  “Sense?” Cromwell flapped his wings angrily, forgetting the one was badly injured. He screeched and jerked the bum wing violently.

  “You okay?”

  “I’ll be fine,” he said, proudly.

  Jesse rounded to the other side of the Dark One. The dog sat on his haunches. “Can I bite him again?”

  “Not now,” Marlene said.

  The man’s eyes slowly opened. “By Mithras … I feel pain! Pain like …”

  He realized what had happened.

  “No!” He tried to get up. But Jesse was on top of him, and Cromwell jumped on his legs, and last but not least, Marlene held him down.

  “You’re coming with us,” she said. “I know you killed Gwen, and I know you did it for the mayor, and I’m taking you to the police now.”

  Through gritted teeth, the Dark One spat out his next words. “Foolish woman. I did not kill Gwen O’Vear.”

  “Oh, right. Like I’m going to believe you.”

  “See for yourself.” He looked down at the hand she was holding him with, and Marlene realized what he was telling her to do.

  By touching his mortal form, she could have a vision. Her mind began to fill with images. The convenience store. Gwen stepping outside. Then sounds. The Dark One asking Gwen about Marlene, about when she’d get to her office, about what she looked like, and Gwen answering by not answering or lying. Gwen had tried to throw him off Marlene’s trail.

  The vision sharpened. More details came into the image. The road. Marlene’s office across the street. Gwen walking toward it. The Dark One didn’t follow her. He just watched, from in front of the convenience store. He wasn’t following her.

  The Dark One began pacing. Marlene heard traffic. Cars passing by on the road. The vision dimmed to blackness and sharpened again. The Dark One was still pacing, and a few seconds later he turned back to her office. He was still in front of the strip mall but angled so that he could see down the side of her building, all the way to the back.

  There was no one back there.

  Until Gwen fell.

  Her body appeared from behind the building, head first. Marlene could see blood and Gwen’s body going down. She hit the pavement hard, like she hadn’t been able to break her own fall. And there was more blood …

  The vision came to an end.

  Marlene opened her eyes. The Dark One looked up at her.

  “I didn’t kill Gwen,” he said.

  “I don’t believe you,” Marlene said.

  “Your vision is pure,” he said. “I could not change what you see.”

  “He’s right, Marlene,” Cromwell said. “You see only the truth. And this creature no longer has the power to distort it.”

  Marlene was dumbfounded. She’d been certain that the Dark One had killed Gwen because he was working for—

  “But Mal A. Gant sent you. You were working for the mayor!” Marlene didn’t want to let it go. Not yet.

  The Dark One squirmed. “I have never met the man.” His grimace turned into an evil grin. “Now how will you save your precious Arthur?”

  “You killed her!” Marlene screamed in his face, knowing he hadn’t.

  Someone else had killed Gwen.

  Twenty-Nine

  Marlene dropped the Dark One off at the police station. Bors was surprised to see her.

  “What do you want me to do with him?” the detective asked.

  “I went to the lake to see for myself how bad the pollution had gotten,” Marlene said. “The mayor really needs to do a better job of protecting our environment. I’m going to discuss that at the next Town Hall so everybody knows. Anyway, this man was there and he attacked me out of nowhere. I’d like to press charges and I’ll be testifying. He tried to kill me. If it weren’t for Jesse here,” Marlene patted the dog’s head. “I’d be dead for sure.”

  Bors took her statement and filled out a couple forms, and then he took the Dark One into custody. When the detective asked him for his name, the man grunted.

  “I don’t have one.”

  Marlene smiled as she left the police station, though it was really only a minor victory. At the very least, Bors would detain the Dark One for a few days. Hopefully the prosecutor would bring charges and get him locked up for a little while. That would keep him out of Marlene’s hair. Though he was mortal, Cromwell had explained his purpose in life remained: to thwart the Merlin.

  At least now he could be locked up.

  Marlene got into the car. Cromwell watched her from the passenger seat. “So of course Jesse gets all the credit because you can’t admit to having an owl for a pet?”

  “I thought you weren’t a pet, Cromwell,” Marlene said.

  “You know what I mean.”

  They drove home. Marlene was exhausted and felt like she could sleep for a week, but she didn’t have that luxury. Now that the Dark One was no longer a suspect, she had to find somebody else.

  “It must be Tom Gelder,” Cromwell said.

  “I agree,” Jesse said. “He was there. He had a strong motive.”

  “Let’s watch the video again. I should be able to break the Dark One’s spell now, right?”

  “You won’t even need to,” Cromwell said. “Whatever he did to the tape will be automatically undone.”

  Marlene stood on the gas pedal and sped home from the station. She skidded to a stop in the driveway and raced inside.

  The DVD player was still on.

  ***

  They settled in on the couch. The footage played out, the same way it had before. They fast-forwarded to where Gwen had entered the store. All three watched with growing anticipation as Gwen and Tom had their short, charged conversation.

  But this time, when Gwen went outside, the image was cleared. The blur they’d noticed from earlier was gone.

  They watched Gwen have a conversation with someone just outside of the image again. Then she ended the discussion and hurried out of the frame. Marlene thought they weren’t going to see anything new, but then the Dark One entered the far corner of the image right where Gwen had been when talking to him. They could only see half his body. He lingered for a moment.

  Then he disappeared … and then he stepped back into sight of the camera … and then he disappeared again …

  He was pacing. Just like she’d seen in the vision when she’d touched his mortal form. The Dark One had peppered Gwen with questions and after she crossed the street, he’d paced in front of the strip while waiting for Marlene to show.

  Marlene felt like she had fresh eyes now and they kept watching. A few more minutes passed.

  And then Tom Gelder p
ushed away from the register.

  Marlene shot forward on her couch. “He’s going OUTSIDE!”

  With her heart in her throat, Marlene watched the footage play out. Gelder rounded the counter and walked toward the entrance. He stopped in front of the doors and peered out the window.

  Marlene waited for him to go outside.

  Gelder stayed there a moment, his eyes looking through the glass.

  “He’s going to go outside,” she said. “He has to!”

  But then Gelder just turned around and walked back to the counter. Once more he settled behind his register and went back to reading his newspaper. They watched the remainder of the footage and Gelder never left the store.

  Marlene threw herself back onto the couch and looked up at the ceiling.

  “This tape proves two things: the Dark One didn’t kill Gwen, and Tom Gelder didn’t kill Gwen.”

  “Then who did?” Jesse asked.

  Thirty

  Marlene woke at seven-thirty.

  She called Terrence Markison to get an update.

  “There’s a bail hearing this morning. What have you got for me?” he snapped.

  “I know that Tom Gelder didn’t kill Gwen,” she said.

  “Oh yeah? You and everybody else. Call me later if you think of anything.”

  Marlene tossed the phone aside, disgusted with the attorney. Though she could understand why he was so impatient with her. So far, she hadn’t offered him any information that he didn’t already have.

  She got up and went to the kitchen. She knew she should eat some breakfast, but she wasn’t hungry. They faced a major problem: her two prime suspects hadn’t killed Gwen. Now she had to find somebody else with a motive.

  Marlene forced down some oatmeal. Her body was a little sore from the supernatural battle on the lake last night, so she tried doing some yoga to take away the stiffness and hopefully clear her mind.

  Thirty minutes later, she still didn’t have any ideas. Marlene checked her calendar and remembered that she was supposed to meet Bob Balin at ten o’clock. It was literally the last thing she felt like doing today. The bail hearing was this morning, so she assumed the trial would begin very soon. Once it did, Artie would be finished. Even if Terrence Markison was able to get an acquittal, there would be enough doubt in people’s minds about him. That was the guy they thought killed Gwen. Even if he went free, it didn’t mean he was innocent.

  She needed the police to find the real killer.

  But she had promised Bob and she owed him. Her recent advice to him had been horrible, but he’d still been willing to give her a second chance. And she had already cancelled with him once. She couldn’t do it again. Their meeting would last twenty, thirty minutes tops.

  It was the right thing to do.

  Marlene showered and got dressed quickly. Jesse stayed home. His back leg was aching from last night’s confrontation. Cromwell didn’t even poke his head up out of his burrowing hole. They were all wiped out from the battle with the Dark One.

  Marlene went to the office. She stopped in the convenience store and bought a coffee from Tom Gelder. At least this morning he was actually polite to her, even if his coffee was undrinkable.

  “Any progress?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I might have been wrong.”

  “What?” He went from friendly to angry in the blink of an eye.

  “Tom, your secrets are safe with me.”

  “You were wrong?” he said. “I don’t believe this. I confided in you.”

  “And like I said, Tom, your secrets are safe with me.”

  He gave her a look like he didn’t believe her and Marlene took that as her cue to leave. So Tom Gelder didn’t like her again. Big deal.

  Marlene backtracked to her office. She went in and opened up and sat behind her desk and powered on her computer. Including Bob, she had six appointments today. She needed to cancel the other five to focus on helping Artie.

  Bob Balin showed up at her door fifteen minutes early. Marlene was surprised to see him. From her desk, she could see through the waiting room, out the window, into the front parking lot. She couldn’t see his car.

  “Hey, Bob.” She met him in the waiting area. “Where are you parked?”

  “Past Mrs. Lee’s place.” He motioned in that direction.

  “Why didn’t you park right out here?”

  He frowned. “I’m, uh, not a very good driver. And your front parking lot backs right up to the street. I don’t like the idea of pulling out with no room to spare.”

  “Gotcha.” She smiled. “Well next time you can park out back. Plenty of room back there.”

  “You have a back lot?” he asked.

  How could he not know that? It was obvious from the street. “Yeah, remember I told you when we talked last week?”

  “You didn’t tell me about the back lot.” Bob looked past her. He was agitated already, and they hadn’t even started their meeting.

  “Bob, is everything okay?”

  “Yeah, yes. I mean, no, not really. With everything going on, I can’t … things are really hard right now.”

  He looked ready to cry.

  “Bob, you know I’m not a therapist so I really think you should talk to somebody. Maybe a psychiatrist can prescribe something that will help you out.”

  “I don’t want to take pills. They’re for people who’ve given up.”

  Marlene didn’t think that at all. She saw mental illness just like any other illness. If you were sick and there was medicine that could help, you took it.

  But challenging Bob’s preconceived notions right now didn’t seem like the best idea. “It might just be temporary.”

  “I can’t even see a shrink if I wanted to! I lost my job, which means my health insurance disappears in a couple weeks. I still have to figure out COBRA, or if I’m going to use the marketplace. Nobody pays for that kind of healthcare. I’ll bet those assholes didn’t think of that when they fired me!”

  Marlene was getting a bad feeling. A sick to the pit of her stomach feeling.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t here yesterday,” Marlene said. “You must have thought I was when you saw the car parked out front.”

  Bob frowned. “There wasn’t any car out front.”

  Marlene’s stomach dropped like a meteorite. In the vision she’d received when contacting Bob, he’d driven past her office and there had been a vehicle parked out front. Though it had been just a blur to Marlene, she could tell it was a car.

  And Marlene knew, with a terrible and cold certainty, what the awful feeling in the pit of her stomach meant.

  “Oh?” She played it off. “I must have been thinking of Paul. He swung by also and mentioned a car out front.”

  He looked at her a moment, his face expressionless. Then he said, “Have you heard anything else about Artie?”

  “Bail hearing this morning,” Marlene said. “Why do you ask?”

  “Just curious.” He shrugged. “I mean, it’s pretty obvious he killed her if all the rumors are true. Guess I want to see justice done. You know?”

  Marlene casually reached into her pocket for her phone. She knew turning her phone into a magical sword in front of Bob would look crazy, but she was more worried about staying alive than anything else.

  Only problem was, her phone wasn’t in her pocket.

  She must have left it back in her office.

  Marlene smiled. “Speaking of Gwen, you just gave me an idea.”

  “What?”

  “Now that you’ve got some free time, maybe you could spend some of it writing.”

  He shook his head. “I need to find a job, Marlene. I can’t spend my time working on a book that has no chance of selling.”

  “Okay, maybe not a new book. But you could spend some time polishing that screenplay you sent Gwen.”

  He just looked at her. Anger screwed his face up.

  She remembered what he’d said yesterday.

  It was like he had no fuse
left.

  And then she remembered the vision of Gwen she’d had. And what the woman had said to her:

  Marlene, you are the cause of this.

  Marlene’s head began to spin.

  Now she understood. Everything. Why, in the last few months, all the advice she’d given out had been bad. Why Bob’s life had fallen apart. Why Bob had …

  Marlene considered her next move. If she stayed here, he could get in front of the door quickly enough to block her. On the other hand, she would need a plausible excuse to get up for a moment and go to her office so that he wouldn’t follow.

  Marlene said, “Gwen told me she had really enjoyed your story.”

  “Really?”

  Marlene nodded.

  Bob smiled but there was nothing pleasant in his eyes. “Then she was a liar.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “She admitted she never read it.”

  “When was that?”

  “The other day,” he said, vaguely.

  Marlene nodded. “It feels like she’s been gone forever, but it only happened a few days ago. When did you run into her?”

  “At the liquor store.”

  “I could use a drink myself right now. Of water. I left mine in my office.” Marlene stood. “Be right back.”

  She tried to act naturally as she headed back into her office. Her phone was right there, on the edge of the desk. She could use it to call for help, or she could turn it into a sword. Marlene wasn’t exactly sure what she was going to do just yet.

  “And you’re a liar.”

  Marlene shrieked and spun around.

  Bob had crept up right behind her without making a sound. He was pointing a gun at her.

  “Bob,” she said innocently, “what are you doing?”

  “I know what you’ve been up to. You’re in love with Artie Ryan, so you’re looking for somebody else to blame.”

  “Bob.” Marlene held out her palms. “I didn’t call you. You came back to me. Remember?”

  “To find out what you knew. And, ever since I got in here this morning, you’ve been trying to trick me. First with the parking, then with seeing a car here yesterday.”

  Marlene swallowed hard. The phone was about four feet behind her. She’d have to jump for it and roll and swing it in one fluid motion. Two seconds, maybe. More than enough time for him to shoot. More than enough.