Sixth Grave on the Edge(77)
“Dirt? I didn’t know him. He was just a scrawny kid.”
“Darn.” I looked at the captain in desperation. “I’ll help you,” I said, scanning my memory for any bit of information I could use on him. Something popped up immediately. “I’ll help you with the Loretta Rosenbaum case.”
He gave me a dubious look. “That case has been cold for a decade.”
“And I’ll warm it up. I have connections,” I said, wriggling my brows. “I can get to people you can’t.”
“Ms. Davidson—”
“Okay,” I said, raising my hands when he tried to get past me, “let’s tell all this to Uncle Bob, just like you said, and get his opinion. Just hear him out, yes?”
He nodded. “I’m going to tell him either way. I would prefer that he arrest me instead of Marsh. Marsh is a dick.”
I almost chuckled at his reference to a detective nobody in the office liked. Poor guy. “I agree.”
I stepped out and waved Ubie over to us. The fake psychic was gone, and though I was dying to ask him about her, I had bigger fish to can.
16
Danger: Attitude subject to change without notice.
—T-SHIRT
Uncle Bob had been distant when he walked in and was even more so now. It was very, very unlike him. We explained the entire situation, even the part where Captain Eckert manufactured evidence and the fact that he knew my deepest, darkest secret. Well, okay, not that deepest, darkest secret, but the one right next to my deepest, darkest secret. My ability to communicate with the departed. If only they knew why.
Uncle Bob listened with a quiet resolve, his poker face excellently placed and maintained throughout, and then he said the unthinkable: “Charley, can you leave us alone for a minute?”
I gaped at him. It was like he was speaking a foreign language—except I knew them all, so that wasn’t the best analogy. “I’m sorry?”
“The captain and me. Can you leave us alone for a minute?”
“I don’t understand.” Ubie had never asked me to leave the room. He usually argued incessantly to let me stay in every situation.
“We need to talk in private.”
“No,” I said, completely offended. “I’m in this thanks to Van over there, and I’ll stay right here, thank you very much.”
Ubie raised a hand and gestured for a uniformed officer to come in. I didn’t recognize him, but he was big and blond and big.
“Could you escort Ms. Davidson out of the building, please?”
I balked. “It’s—it’s that fake psychic chick, isn’t it? You think she’s going to solve cases for you? She’s as fake as your hairline.”
Ubie scowled at me. I scowled back, all the way to the front door of the station, where I proceeded to wrench free from the officer and brush myself off. “That was so uncalled for,” I said to him. He stood there and watched me go.
My phone rang when I got to Misery.
“Are you okay?” Cookie asked.
“Yes. I’m fine.”
“You don’t sound fine.”
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t sound fine.”
“I’m so not fine!” I said, collapsing into a blob of sniffling nerves. “Something is up with Uncle Bob. I think he’s … he’s mad at me.”
Cookie gasped. “Robert is never mad at you.”
“I know. I just don’t know what to think.”
“Me neither. On the bright side, you can talk it over with your therapist. Your appointment is in half an hour.”
“I can’t go to therapy. That woman needs more therapy than I do.”
“Most therapists do, hon. You still have to go. If you miss again, your sister will kill you.”
“Cook, I have a thousand cases going on at once. My life has been threatened. My apartment has been ransacked. A half-human, half-demon stole a priceless dagger from me and won’t return it until he gets together with Swopes so they can talk prophecies. And I was just almost arrested for drug possession and kiddie porn.”
“Your sister won’t care.”
“My sister is at a conference in D.C.”
“And you think that would stop her?”
I changed lanes to head back the direction I’d come. “Fine. I’ll go.”
“Good girl. We need coffee and creamer at the office.”
“Okay.”
“And I need an orange bra and a tennis racket. It’s a new home-defense thing.”
“Okay.”
“And I thought about having sex with Garrett on my desk.”
“Okay. But really, why do you think Ubie is mad at me?”
“I don’t know, hon. He adores you. He’ll get over it.”