I didn’t know Serafina well. She’d only moved to Eb Falls last year and had taken over Miss Pritchard’s position as the coroner’s assistant when she retired, but she was always pleasant enough if we ran into each other at the grocery store.
Single, middle-aged and quite attractive, she’d joined a bunch of community efforts and everyone seemed to like her a great deal. That she was so friendly gave me hope she’d spill the beans on what she knew about the prelim report on Wade’s death.
So I stuck my hand out to her. “I’m Win’s friend, Stevie Cartwright. I’ve heard so many lovely things about you, Serafina.”
She set her soda on the counter and turned back around slowly to take my hand. “Ah! So you’re the Stevie we’ve heard so much about?”
Win had been talking about me? I really felt like a rat now. So, I smiled and nodded. “The one and only. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Serafina,” we both said at once, until Win saw my sourpuss eyes signal him to let me do the talking, and he backed off, differing to me. I cleared my throat and looked into her pretty gray eyes, artfully made up with eyeshadow and mascara. “Serafina, I’m sure you’re aware of Wade Lees… Well, his unfortunate passing.”
She grabbed her soda and nodded sadly. “I am. Did you know him?”
“I did. I’m friendly with his husband, Kirkland Endicott. It was quite tragic.”
She nodded her brunette head, her eyes going big and round. “It’s just horrible. Poor Kirkland. He was a huge help to me when I landscaped my small garden. He was the one I told you was able to get me that rare orchid, remember, Win?”
“I do,” he confirmed quietly, his gaze at me sheepish.
“It is quite sad. We’re all very distressed. Anyway, Kirkland has asked me…er, us to do a bit of digging. I don’t know if you’re aware, but sometimes I lend a hand in an investigation.”
Serafina lifted her chin then, her eyes narrowing just a smidge. “Right. I think it was Detective Montgomery who said you, uh…lend a hand.”
Oh, dear. She’d talked to Starsky? As I’m painfully aware, he hates my guts. He still thinks I’m responsible for sending his shady partner to prison after Starsky’s partner, Hutch, tried to kill me in the Eb Falls PD parking lot.
This couldn’t be good.
From the look on her face and the tone in her voice, this was about to go south. But I was going to give it a real run for its money to keep it from crossing the border while the running was good.
Smoothing a hand over my tweed trench coat, I nodded. “Yes, Detective Montgomery. I’m acquainted. Anyway, as I was saying, Kirkland has asked me, um, asked us to lend a hand, and of course, as one would expect, he’s thoroughly devastated—distraught, really. So I was wondering if maybe you could answer a couple of questions for me—”
“Why do you want to ask me questions? How could I possibly help you?” she asked in a raised voice, her red-glossed lips pinched, her forehead wrinkling with a frown.
I held up a hand, letting my purse strap fall to the crook of my elbow. “No, no. I was only— I mean, this isn’t an—”
Now she held up her hand to stop me, her magenta nails flashing in my face. “You’re asking because you know what I do and who I work for. That’s why you’re asking.”
Well, okay. Yes. That was why I was asking. “Yes, but—”
“You stop right there, Stevie Cartwright,” she demanded with a small stomp of her booted foot. “That’s confidential information. You want me to give you the inside scoop on Wade Lees’s autopsy, and I won’t do it.”
The couple or so people who were wandering around the lobby of the theater stopped to look at us, making me feel incredibly uncomfortable.
“Now, now, Sera,” Win soothed, stepping in with his winning smile and very white teeth. “We’re simply hoping to ease Kirkland’s mind. For some, for those left behind, sometimes it helps to know how it happened. He was bloody blindsided by this, and they’ve only been married for a matter of months. We only want to help him heal.”
Yeah, heal. But wait another minute. Let’s go back a second. I was still stuck on what Win had called her. Sera?
Sera? Really?
“You’re such a kind man—so considerate,” she cooed at him with a dreamy sigh. I know it was dreamy because I breathed those very sighs all the time where Win was concerned.
But hold the phone there, Nellie, he was considerate for wanting to ease Kirkland’s fears, and I was what? A monster for asking the same stinkin’ question he was surely going to ask? Ohhh. I could just scream!
“As Stevie said, we only want to clear up at least some of the mystery surrounding his death so that poor Kirkland can at least feel like the wheels of justice are being greased. Of course, we would keep it confidential, but we’d never ask you to compromise your impeccable standards.” He paused and smiled extra bright with understanding oozing from his pores. “Alas, we’ll simply have to wait for the news to report their results. I do hope someone is with Kirkland when he hears. Anyway, it was wonderful to see you, Sera. Enjoy your movie.”
As Win turned to leave, Sera stopped him by tugging at his arm. “I guess it won’t hurt to tell you what’s going to be on the news today, anyway. I just sent the prelim report for release to the detectives, and they’ll announce it soon enough.” Her shoulders lifted under her light raincoat, and she sighed in resignation. “He was strangled, his trachea crushed. There are ligature marks from the murder weapon, with bruising and red lashes to his neck.”
This was something we both already knew, but hearing it confirmed out loud, even in my state of simmering irritation with Serafina, left me fighting a gasp.
“So whatever was around his neck is the culprit, I’m guessing?” Win asked, his face as somber as his tone.
Serafina let her head hang low, the fall of her hair covering the side of her face. “Yes. That’s what Dr. Givens said. It was some kind of choker necklace—or maybe it was something he wore as a necklace but wasn’t a necklace, and it choked him.” She shook her head, her confusion clear. “I can’t remember what my boss called it, but if I can think of it before the report comes out, I’ll text you. Now, I really better run. I don’t want to miss the beginning of the movie.”
Win swept his hand in a gallant gesture toward the path to the theater. “Enjoy the movie then. I’ll see you next week. And thank you again.” He tapped the spot on his chest where his heart beat. “I’m ever so grateful for you.”
Serafina twittered a bit, her cheeks glowing before she appeared to remember I was there, and then she straightened and excused herself with a wave of her hand, leaving us standing at the snack counter.
That was when Win smiled down at me, all innocent, and said, “Well, that proved fruitful, eh, Dove?”
Yep. It sure did.
Know what else it proved?
For the second time in Win’s life, someone was going to kill him.
Guess who that someone is?
Chapter 10
“Baloney!” I spat at Win as we entered our house after we’d bickered the entire ride home. Or correction—I’d bickered, and Win had pretended to be astonished at my reaction. “You with your charming charisma and your James Bond accent. Don’t tell me you didn’t pour it on extra thick so we could pump Sera for information, either, because then I’ll have to call you a Lying McLiar Pants, buddy.”
Oh, I was fuming. Yes, yes, yes. I know I’m sounding more petty and jealous by the second, but I wasn’t so much jealous over Serafina, as pretty as she is. I think I was jealous because all Win had to do was smile and speak with his sexy British accent and everyone was falling at his feet and spilling their guts, and that included Dana.
He held out his hand to me to take my coat so he could hang it up, ever the gentleman. “But we did get the information we wanted, didn’t we, Dove? Wasn’t that the goal? I don’t understand the problem.”
Of course he didn’t understand the problem. He was a man. A sexy one at that.
One who made women sigh dreamy sighs and fawn all over him. I, on the other hand, was a woman, and unless the person I wanted information from was a man—a man I’d have to use my feminine wiles to wheedle information from (which really isn’t my thing. Vixen looks ridiculous on me)—I seriously have to work harder than Win ever will to get the information needed from the people I question.
It was becoming glaringly apparent and, quite frankly, unfair that Win would always be better at this than me just by nature of his sparkling personality.
Then I thought about that for a moment.
Never mind. Scratch that. Win was as successful with men as he was with women. Just look at how he’d turned Dana into his BFF even after he’d told him he was reincarnated.
So really, who am I kidding? He could get a rock to talk.
“Malutka? I think I see green monster. Rawrrr!” Arkady teased with a hearty chuckle. I could just picture his eyes in his handsome face, lighting up with amusement.
I stuck my tongue out as I made my way down the hall to the kitchen, where Whiskey greeted us with his usual exuberance, prancing about, his tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth.
I reached down and gave my favorite furry friend a good scratch on his fluffy ears. “You see nothing of the sort, Arkady. You see frustration with everyone’s hero here, getting people to bow and scrape and practically beg him to listen to their secrets while I can barely get a crumb. It’s like Prince Charming and The Amateur Sleuth have partnered up to investigate murder mysteries.”
“That might make good book, yes, lemon meringue pie?” Arkady said on a chuckle. “Handsome ex-British spy and pretty pseudo detective solve mysteries while navigating the waters of love?
I frowned up at the ceiling. “Don’t you make jokes, funny man. I’m being serious!”
Win went directly to the coffee maker and began to prepare a pot. Likely because he thought caffeine might appease me. “That is not true, Stephania. I’m no Prince Charming, and you’re quite good at this. You did it long before I was physically on the scene. If it appears that way, it’s only that I’ve been doing this much longer. I know my way around people. I spent many years studying them. I have experience, Dove. Would you hold that against me?” His eyebrow lifted when he asked the question. “I should think you’d be pleased I was able to get Sera to talk to us.”
I wanted to throw myself down on the ground and kick my feet, but I knew that was a ridiculous reaction to Win successfully getting the information we were looking for. He’d done what needed to be done. Why couldn’t I be happy we got what we needed?
Ugh. What was happening to me?
Still, I wasn’t ready to acknowledge as much. I like my grudges served hot and fast, thank you very much. So I held on, internally anyway.
I scooped up Strike, hoping stroking his feathers would soothe me. “Speaking of, did you hear Serafina say he was possibly strangled with what he was wearing around his neck? Do you remember it?”
Win ground up the beans and shook his head. “What I did see was very brief. It was black, but it was most definitely thick—maybe at least an inch. If it was a choker, it was a wide one.”
I pulled my phone from the back pocket of my jeans and texted Kirkland to ask if he knew whether Wade wore chokers. “I saw it, too, but like you, it was brief, and we didn’t take pictures this time. So we have nothing to go on other than he might have been choked with it.” And then I remembered something else that left my blood cold. “His trachea was crushed, Win. That takes a lot of anger.”
“Dah,” Arkady muttered. “When she say this, I think back to how happy Wade always was, and I understand even less. Who could be so angry they crush his trachea?”
I plopped down in a chair at the kitchen table, sitting Strike in my lap. “Okay, so here’s what we have so far. Wade was a really nice guy with no enemies anyone can think of. Yet, Chester says he was arguing with someone in the men’s bathroom at the theater, and the person had a black shoe with a copper buckle that looked fancy. He also said the argument made Wade cry. That was last week.”
“And this week,” Win said, pressing the button to turn on our shiny coffee maker, “he flew home early from a conference but never picked up his luggage—which suggests he was in a rush to meet someone back here in Washington. We already surmised he was strangled, not only because of how he looked upon death but because of his afterlife visit, where he mimicked being strangled and then shouted out letters and words we still don’t understand. Since then, we’ve also had a visit from what we thought was a riding crop that could have been an afterlife clue, but might not, in fact, have been a riding crop at all. It could have been a representation of a flogger. Then you actually found a flogger Kirkland can’t explain, and a business card with the name Divinia on it.”
I didn’t understand how this riding crop/maybe a flogger fit into our current scenario.
Sighing, I took a deep, cleansing breath before I set Strike on the floor and grabbed my laptop to look up the name Divinia. I don’t know what I hoped to find with such a random search, but what else did we have?
Win set down two steaming mugs on the table and grabbed a chair. “When are we meeting with the Endicotts, Dove?”
I looked at the time on my laptop. “In forty-five minutes, and they’d better not put me off again or I’m going to storm the castle.”
Harris Endicott had left me a voice mail to tell me his afternoon was full and he’d have to “fit my pretty face in” a little later than he’d anticipated. I wanted to sock him in his stupid face for not cooperating with us, but later was better than never. Win reminded me that he didn’t have to see us if he wasn’t inclined. But it still steamed my knickers.
This was his son’s husband, for pity’s sake. He should want to do everything in his power to help solve this murder, but he showed about as much concern over his son as he would a stranger off the street.
Surely, despite disapproving of his son’s lifestyle, he wouldn’t want to see him in so much pain, would he?
I didn’t even really think Harris or Rosemary were going to be of much help—especially if Wade avoided Harris because his father disapproved of him. But I was going to turn every stone anyway.
Bel buzzed into the kitchen then, awake from his afternoon nap. “Boss—how goes the investigation?”
I grunted as, again, I came up dry. There was nothing the name Divinia brought up other than a clothing line by a rapper, a drag queen in England, and several names on Facebook. Closing the laptop, I smiled at Bel, who landed on my shoulder and nuzzled my ear.
Rubbing the top of his head with my index finger, I stood to cut up some oranges and strawberries for Bel’s afternoon snack. “Like it always does. Slow as molasses uphill in the wintertime. Though, we did get verification on the method of murder—which was as we thought. Strangulation.”
I told him a little about what Serafina and Chester had told us as I took the plate full of fresh fruit to the table and set it in the middle.
He hopped off my shoulder and onto the table’s surface. “So back to square one?”
I nodded my head with a resigned sigh and grabbed my phone when it signaled a text from Kirkland. He claimed he’d never seen Wade wear any kind of choker—or jewelry, for that matter—except for his wedding ring. Not ever.
Of course he hadn’t. Because that would be a clue that might lead somewhere, and we couldn’t have that, now could we?
I put the phone down and sipped my coffee. “So what do we have left? I guess we could go to Sea-Tac and see if Wade met anyone when he deplaned, right? Maybe someone met him and they left together? Was his car parked at the airport or did he Uber? Or did someone pick him up?”
“Of course, we could always talk to whomever was working at the airport that night. Maybe a porter or someone else on the flight, but if you’re fishing for video evidence, I fear we’ll run into exactly the same thing we ran into at the theater when it comes to that, Dove.”
“So are
you saying you can’t charm the socks off airport security? Is that above your pay grade, International Man of Mystery?” I asked, a challenge in my eyes.
Win leaned forward and dropped a kiss on the tip of my nose. “My, my. You do hold a grudge, don’t you, Cheeky One?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I’m not holding a grudge, I’m telling the truth.”
“Ding-ding-ding!” Bel shouted with a mouthful of strawberries. “Get back to your corners and save the lover’s quarrel for another time, Mom and Dad. We have a murder to solve.” Setting down his strawberry, he looked at us, his tiny snout in the air. “Sheesh, have they been like this all day, Arkady?”
He laughed, the rumble settling in my ears. “Dah, wing-ed one. My malutka is crabby pants. She does not like how easy Zero make questioning people look.”
I rolled my eyes again and began to clear my coffee cup. “We have to get going if we’re gonna talk to the Endicotts. Or should I say, we’d better hurry so Win can charm the diamonds off Rosemary Endicott.”
“Jelly-jelly!” Bel yelped, waving his wing at me.
Hands on my hips, I sucked in my cheeks and looked at Bel. “I’m not jelly, buddy, so you’d better hush. Now, are we going to stand around here all day or are we going to do what Kirkland asked us to do?”
Win threw up his hands and grinned at me. “Far be it from me to keep the wheels of justice from turning. Let’s go while the going’s good.”
“Bel? Are you joining us or would you prefer to stay home?”
Bel drew the tip of his wing to his cheek. “Hmmm. Let’s see. Do I want to stay here where it’s warm and dry and hang with my favorite buddies, or do I want to be stuffed in your tiny purse and listen to that jerk Endicott blow hot air? So many choices.”
I dropped a kiss on the top of his tiny head. “Okay, we’ll see you for dinner. I love you. Text if you need me.”
Witch Perfect (Witchless in Seattle Mysteries Book 11) Page 10
