He swiveled his chair in order to look at every immortal in the room. “Please, try to think. What have you heard? What have you suspected? What do you remember from your time with them? Anything you can give me could be helpful.”
It was quiet for a while. The Smiths had a telepathic conversation with a lot of head tilting and scrunched lips and furrowed brows. The Wards weren’t looking at each other at all. Mrs. Ward kept glancing at Jasmine and me, and chewing on the inside of her cheek. Uncle Victor waited, pen poised over his notebook.
The water cooler gurgled. The fan hummed. Outside, the cloudy sky finally started spitting the drizzle forecasted for today.
“If Fadele and Nij hired this contract killer in response to the proposition,” Mr. Ward finally said, addressing the ceiling, “then they would have to be part of my district. Otherwise, the proposition wouldn’t apply to them.”
“I figured as much,” Uncle Vic said with a respectful nod.
“In that case, how could you not sense them?” Mrs. Smith asked.
The Wards cast another uneasy glance at me and Jasmine, as if they didn’t want us overhearing a conversation about their weird sixth sense.
“Seriously?” Jasmine asked. “We’re all cursed here. What’s the problem?”
Mrs. Ward’s left eye twitched. “You have no proof that we—”
“What, you think we’re going to blackmail you?” My sister raked her hands through her hair, breathing deeply as if barely keeping her anger in check. “People are dying. That might not mean anything to you, but it does to us.” She gestured to our uncle. “He’s not wearing a wire. We’re not interested in telling anyone your secrets. We just want to solve our case.”
“Because we can’t…” Mr. Ward cleared his throat. “I mean, because we haven’t been made aware of them, I believed them to be beyond our radius. Fadele and Nij would want to flock to rural areas with high crime rates in order to blend in, but there have been no reports of increased crime in my district. More reasons why I didn’t suspect them sooner,” he added in his defense.
“It’s possible that your district is only one place where they do business,” Mr. Smith said almost reluctantly, “and they reside somewhere else, outside our radius of awareness.”
“Then they could be anywhere,” his wife added, casting a sympathetic look Uncle Victor’s way.
“Indeed.” Mrs. Ward sent a haughty look toward our uncle. “Have we done enough of your work now? Are we allowed to go? We have meetings to attend.”
Jasmine’s face twisted in disgust. She was about to say something, but I reached out to her, shaking my head.
“Of course, ma’am,” Uncle Victor said, rising stoically from his chair. “Thank you for your time.”
The Smiths stood and joined us in watching the Wards leave. “I’m sorry we couldn’t be more helpful.”
Jasmine was so mad she was shaking. “You were more helpful than they were.”
Uncle Victor, ever the polite host, shook their hands. “Thank you for coming.”
Mrs. Smith draped her jacket over her arm with a nod. “Of course. Let us know if there’s anything else we can do.”
As soon as we were alone, Uncle Victor shook his head. “Your behavior was inexcusable, Jazz.”
“They were being uncooperative. You should’ve threatened them with obstruction,” was my sister’s retort. She paced in front of the water cooler, glaring out the gloomy windows. “So many lives have already been lost because of their carelessness and arrogance. But do they care? No. They’re more concerned about their meetings.”
“Be that as it may, we’re supposed to be professionals,” our uncle said, dragging out that last word. “And you were anything but. You’re not allowed to participate in my interrogations for the foreseeable future.”
Jasmine heaved a big sigh; some of the anger drained away from her face. “Yeah, I figured.”
“What do we do now?” I asked around a yawn.
“Nessie will keep scourging the Salamander files.” Uncle Victor rubbed his eyes. His shoulders seemed to sag in defeat. “I’ll try to get my buddies from Interpol and the FBI on the phone again, see if they can’t remember the Salamander ever being associated with a powerful couple in the underground.”
“Fadele and Nij were in New Delhi in the nineteen-sixties, around the same time as one of the Salamander’s hits,” Jasmine said. “Mention it to your friend. Maybe something in that murder investigation will be the connection we’re looking for.”
My uncle nodded before hiking up his sleeve to check the time. “Are you guys hungry? It’s past lunch time.”
My stomach growled. Oh, yeah. I hadn’t eaten anything since the toast…
Thinking about breakfast got me thinking about Esmer. I’d been successfully distracting myself with the case all morning so my insides wouldn’t be chewed up by anxiety and doubt, but all those worries came back, like a swarm of gnats buzzing around my face.
Had she found my presents yet? Was she still mad at me? Would she take me back? Was her silence my answer? Did that mean she wasn’t going to forgive me?
I saw us sitting on her bed, passing the can of whipped cream back and forth, sharing awkward memories, laughing at each other while the music played. All those afternoons playing games on the Switch and doing homework together. Drinking in her secretive smiles and fierce green eyes without being afraid of getting caught. Freely confessing my fears and weaknesses and doubts. Holding her. Kissing her. Discovering new things about her with every stroke of my hand.
Was it all gone now?
I’d heard the expression “heavy-hearted” before, a term I’d coined as “overly dramatic”
