Page 75 of Wicche Hunt

Me: How?

Dave: If the grimoire is demon made and we know who the demon is, I might be able to locate it. MIGHT. Let me look into it.

Me: Great. Thank you!

Dave: Yeah and Maggie says thanks for the hedgehog.

Osso badged his way through the gate at the entrance to the 17-Mile Drive. The road led through some of the most beautiful properties in Carmel and Pacific Grove. It hugged the ocean and included Pebble Beach, the Lone Cypress, huge mansions, the Del Monte Forest.

“Why was a former groundskeeper on an estate around here?” I asked.

“We had the same question,” Hernández said. “Turns out the couple that owns the place, the Masons, have a kid who went to Cypress Academy.”

“Interesting,” I said.

“We thought so too. The owners are in Europe and told us their son lives in New York now. He went to Harvard and works in finance. We’ll check his whereabouts, but we doubt he’s taking a red-eye back and forth across the country to kill people from his old school. From what Mom says, he loved Cypress. We haven’t been able to reach him yet.”

“Very important meetings,” Osso sneered.

“Yes,” Hernández confirmed, “but the secretary says he’s there. We’ll reach out to the local PD and see if they can check for us.”

“So was Garza working as their groundskeeper?” I asked.

“No. He has his own landscaping business now. Had. It’s quite successful.But, Mom did let it slip that junior liked to throw end-of-year parties at their estate when they were away.”

“Meaning,” Osso cut in, “all of his classmates would be familiar with the estate and that his parents went to Europe every year around this time.”

“If they’d been invited,” I said.

Hernández turned around to look at me.

“I doubt he invited everyone. This wasn’t a kindergarten birthday party. If the murderers felt comfortable enough to use it to kill Garza, they’d probably at least attended the parties, meaning they were part of the popular crowd or—”

“Had a grudge against the kid and wanted to cause some trouble,” Osso finished.

I nodded. “Exactly.”

“We were thinking friend,” Hernández said, “but maybe enemy. These two probably knew how to hang with the crowd. The Masons’ son”—she checked her notes—“Edmund might not have even known they hated him. Your cousin thought he was charming, right?”

“Yeah. She did.” It was so much easier thinking of these two in the abstract. When I had to consider Pearl’s death, her mother’s grief, it hollowed me out.

The car went silent and then Hernández said, “Sorry. That was thoughtless of me.”

“No. You’re working. This is what you need to do to figure out who the killers are. Do what you do. I’m fine.”

Osso turned off the 17-Mile Drive, which was always slow with tourists stopping to take pics. He used back roads to get us to the Masons’ seaside estate. There was a tall, wrought iron fence at a break in a high stone wall. You couldn’t see the house through the bars of the gate. The narrow drive curved out of sight, hiding the estate from random sightseers.

Osso got out and punched in a security code on a keypad to the left of the gate. When the gate rumbled open, he got back in and drove through a grove of trees before the road opened to a rolling lawn leading to a French Provincial mansion. The trees seemed to surround the entire estate. It went on so far, though, it was hard to tell for sure.

“Stables? Am I seeing horse stables way back there?” I asked.

“Sure looks like it,” Hernández said.

“I wonder who takes care of the horses when the family’s away,” I said. “I mean, who’s mowing this perfectly manicured lawn? There must be tons of people with that code to get in here and maintain this place.”

“Yeah,” Osso said. “Hernández has a list of—what—almost twenty service people who come to the estate regularly. The housecleaning service comes twice a week, regardless of whether the family is home.” He shook his head. “Something about dust and musty smells. I don’t know. Rich people problems.”

“Okay, so are we sure—” I stopped. What the hell was I doing? I wasn’t a detective. Why was I acting like I was on their investigative team?

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