Free A Ghoul's Guide to Love and Murder by Victoria Laurie Page A

more.”
    â€œIt’s because of the ‘lot more’ that we need that dagger back,” Heath said. “We have to find it.”
    Olivera considered all three of us for a bit before she pulled up her own iPad and flipped it around to us. Turning it on, she tapped on the photos icon and said, “I’d say it’s definitely imperative that we find your dagger.”
    Her finger stroked the iPad to one particular photo that caused me to suck in a shocked breath. The victim was someone I recognized. It was Phil Sullivan, the museum director, and in the photos of his body, he appeared to be lying faceup on the museum floor staring sightlessly upward with his mouth hanging open as if in midscream. The scene was quite gruesome; the top of Phil’s head sported a terrible wound, and the area behind him was covered in a pool of blood.
    There are things in life that you don’t really need to see. A man murdered like that is one of them. Turning my face away from the screen, I whispered, “My God . . . that poor man.”
    â€œWhen did this happen?” Heath asked.
    â€œWe believe it happened between eight fifty and nine p.m.,” she said.
    â€œThat’s pretty specific,” Gilley said, and I knew the three of us each felt a tiny hint of relief that we all had alibis for the time Sullivan was murdered. Heath and I had been at the ice-cream parlor, and Gilley had been at our place, on the phone with his fiancé for almost that entire time.
    â€œThe museum closed at seven and the last employees left at eight,” Olivera explained. “An alarm in the exhibit was triggered at eight fifty p.m., and we think Sullivan was in his office working late when the alarm sounded upstairs and he went to investigate. Officers responded to the alarm, and they got there at two minutes past nine, finding Sullivan already dead at the scene, the dagger gone from the display case, and no sign of the killer.”
    â€œSecurity footage?” Heath asked hopefully.
    Olivera said, “All fed to a computer that was housed on-site at the museum. A laptop kept in a security closet on the same floor as your exhibit. The closet was broken into and the laptop was also stolen.”
    Gilley’s jaw dropped and he became visibly upset. “Why would the museum have such a stupid setup for their security footage?” he demanded. “Everyone knows that, these days, you send the feed off-site tomake sure law enforcement always has access to the footage!”
    Olivera shrugged. “Sullivan was the one who set up the system. So we can’t really ask him why he had it set up that way.”
    â€œFingerprints?” I asked. “DNA? Other witnesses?”
    â€œWe’re still processing the scene and canvassing the area,” she said. “It’ll be a while before we know if we have anything to go on.”
    â€œWas anyone else hurt?” Gilley asked, and I could hear the guilt in his voice. A sideways glance at him told me he was on the verge of tears.
    â€œNo,” Olivera said, but I knew it was just a matter of time, and truthfully we had no way of knowing if there weren’t already more victims. Maybe there were other casualties that simply hadn’t been reported yet. Still, I wasn’t going to mention that to Gilley. He felt bad enough.
    â€œHow can we help?” Heath asked the detective. But it was her lieutenant who answered.
    â€œYou can’t,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “And frankly, even with your alibis I’m not convinced you three aren’t behind this as some kind of publicity stunt.”
    I felt myself getting really angry. It was one thing to accuse us of faking the footage from that hotel in San Francisco when Oruç’s demon had first reared its ugly head, but it was another thing entirely to suggest we’d conspired to commit murder just to make ourselves famous.
    â€œWould it help