Gettin' Witched (Witchless in Seattle Mysteries Book 12)

by Dakota Cassidy

  Looking down at my knee, I realized he was right. I was bleeding pretty good, but it wasn’t a big deal. “I’m fine, really, Sanders,” I assured him as I stooped to gather the things from my purse. “Did you happen to see who that was? The blonde woman with the floppy hat?”

  He knelt and grabbed my stray packet of tissues and antibacterial wipes, handing them to me as he helped me rise. “I did. She’s a guest at the inn.”

  I blinked in disbelief. “The woman I was just running after is staying at the inn?”

  He nodded his perfectly groomed head and ran a hand over his bearded chin. “She is. Do you know her?”

  Hmmm. Did I pretend I knew her or not? He wouldn’t bother giving me her name if I lied and said I did, and I needed to know her name.

  This was a case of WWWD. What would Win do?

  And then, inspiration struck. “I don’t, but I adore her hat and I’d love one just like it,” I said on a coquettish smile, which was greeted with a brief but odd look from Sanders.

  So I wasn’t good at flirting, all right? I didn’t even know if this was the right time to flirt, but it always worked for Win.

  I was grateful when he ignored my clumsy attempt at getting information and held out his arm to me and smiled back. He pointed to the inn down the road. “Then come back to the inn with me and we’ll see if we can’t put you two together while we tend to that nasty scratch, all right?”

  Glancing at my phone, I noticed I only had about thirty minutes before my hair appointment, but I decided it was worth it to find out who the mystery woman was.

  So I hooked my arm through Sanders’s and let him guide me to the inn, situated at the end of the road. I loved the inn. It was a cute little B&B with gorgeous flower beds fashioned after an English garden. Quaint and perfect for a small seaside town.

  As we approached, I kept my eyes peeled on the surrounding area, but I didn’t see the woman at all.

  Still, I took time to appreciate the clean white siding Sanders had put up and the gorgeous deep blue flower boxes that sat outside each window, stuffed full of pink geraniums and purple verbena.

  I took the wide refinished wood steps slowly, my knee stinging a bit, and complimented him on the front porch with its row of rocking chairs, and lush green ferns hanging from the porch’s roof.

  “You’ve done a beautiful job, Sanders. I love how everything looks.”

  He tipped an imaginary hat at me and grinned, flashing his white teeth, making me wonder how, thus far, he’d escaped the single ladies in Eb Falls.

  “Thank you. I hope Coraline would approve.”

  I smiled and patted his arm. Sanders was a widow who needed something to keep his mind occupied—or at least that’s what he’d told us at the summer festival when we’d first met him. That he’d decided to buy an inn at the age of sixty-two and run it himself because it had always been his dream said something about his desire to stay young and live life.

  “I’m pretty sure Coraline would love it,” I assured him with a smile. “She knew it was time to update, but I think she was ready to call it quits and let someone else take over the reins. I’m glad it was you.”

  He hitched his bearded jaw toward the front door with a smile and a twinkle in his kind eyes. “C’mon, let’s go get you taken care of.”

  The cool interior of the inn had been partially renovated, too, turning it into a gorgeous specimen of farmhouse meets English country. The colors were crisp and clean but welcoming, from the pillows on the chairs to the beautiful aged white furniture.

  Sanders brought me to the front desk, a well-loved antiqued piece where the cash register and computer screen sat, and held up a finger. “Wait right there and let me get the first-aid kit and some antiseptic cream.”

  I nodded and smiled, still keeping an eye out for the woman, but the only thing I saw, or rather heard, was light chatter from the kitchen, where I assumed they were gearing up for dinner.

  Sanders swept back in, first-aid kit in hand, his spring-fresh cologne settling in my nostrils as he popped the box open and pulled out some alcohol swabs and cream.

  I took them from him and wiped away the drying blood, wincing when I saw how deeply I’d scraped my knee. “So, about that hat,” I mentioned as casually as I could.

  “Oh, of course,” He cleared his throat and went to his computer screen, grabbing the mouse. “I’ll send her a message this instant.”

  Shoot. He wasn’t going to give me her name. “That’s okay. I can just go knock on her door. What’s her name?” I asked as innocently as I could, knowing it was a long shot.

  Sanders blustered a bit, his warm eyes concerned. “You know I can’t give you that, Stevie. Our guests are afforded the utmost in privacy. She’ll have to get in touch with you herself. She’s not here now, anyway. The notation I have says she’ll be out all day and won’t require dinner.”

  I pretended I’d forgotten such vital hotel courtesies as I dug around for a bandage to slap on my knee. Luckily, there wasn’t one in the kit.

  “Right. What was I thinking? Please do send her a message and give her my name and phone number. I’ll jot it down before I go. But first, do you have any Band-Aids? There don’t seem to be any in the kit.” I held it up to show him.

  Another smile wreathed his tanned face. “I’ll go grab one right now.”

  While he did that, I scurried around the desk and looked at the computer screen Sanders had completely forgotten to close.

  And there it was.

  Room five.

  Donna Blitzhen.

  Boom.

  Chapter 8

  My stomach plummeted to my feet, but I managed to make my way back around the desk to wait for my bandage and look innocent all at the same time.

  So, Donna Blitzhen was here, registered in a room at The Sunshine Inn. Things just became very real, and now I had something concrete to confront Win with at dinner tonight.

  I was almost at the point where I was ready to cancel my long-awaited, much-needed hair appointment and mani/pedi and demand the love of my life meet me and explain.

  Yet, I was still afraid someone might be tapping my phone or watching me, and if Win had been instructed to keep me out of the loop, I could endanger his life.

  Sanders showed back up with my bandage, that handsome smile still on his face, stalling the idea I should meet with Win. I took it from him with a return smile and thanked him before saying I had a hair appointment I couldn’t miss and escaped the charm of the inn.

  Speaking of Win, Mr. Ex-Spy-Keeper-of-Secrets, he texted me as I was making my way back toward my car.

  “How fares your day, Dove?” Heart emoji.

  Here was the better question. “How fares yours?” I texted back, hoping he read the subtext of my message.

  “Still with the garden club ladies, but I do hope to finish soon. Are we still on track for dinner?”

  Leave it to an ex-spy to be at a garden club and worry about making our reservation on time when he was being blackmailed by some drug lord—or some bad person—or whatever.

  He was playing this off as though there was absolutely nothing wrong, and I had to trust he knew what he was doing and that he was doing it to protect us. But, oh boy, when I got my hands on him, he was in for a good dressing down.

  Also, excuse me, but he’d been just a little careless with leaving that note at Madam Z’s, hadn’t he? He was rusty, and I was going to tell him so the moment I laid eyes on him.

  Until then, there wasn’t much more to do than go have my hair and nails done.

  I wasn’t sure how I’d sit through all that poking and prodding while I worried about Win, but for now, he was at the garden club. At the very least, I knew where he was, and he was safe.

  “Dove? Are you still there, or is your lovely head buried under a dryer?”

  “Yes. We’re still on track for tonight, and we absolutely must talk then. I’ll see you at eight sharp. Stay safe.” Heart emoji, heart emoji, heart emoji.

&n
bsp; I couldn’t resist writing that last line, but I told him to be safe all the time—it shouldn’t arouse any suspicion if someone was watching.

  “I promise we’ll have a nice, long chat this eve, Dove.”

  He sent a heart emoji back and was gone, leaving me sighing. If he wasn’t concerned, I wasn’t sure I should be. Would Win really allow himself to be surrounded by danger and never give us the head’s up, knowing the people he’d dealt with in his past were deadly and could harm us?

  I can’t believe he’d do that, but how else could he explain everything I’d learned since this morning? Still, his promise to have a nice long chat eased my mind a bit.

  I walked toward the salon, located two doors down from Madam Z’s, with only about five minutes to spare, trying to get into the mood for my girlie day. Goodness knows I really needed it. I mean, I really needed it. I’d put it off far too long.

  But I was sick worried about Win, and I had a million questions about the blonde, and now, with hindsight, I was worried that chasing her would cause upset.

  If Win were in real trouble, wouldn’t my hunting this woman down only make things worse? Dang. I hadn’t thought about that…

  Lost in thought, I pushed open the door of Leif’s salon and wandered in. The scent of chemicals and a minty shampoo greeted my nose while a pop muzac station played an instrumental version of Lady GaGa’s “Bad Romance.”

  It was quiet, which struck me as odd, seeing as Leif made it sound like he had more clients than the Yankees have pennants. Yet, it was mostly empty, with the exception of his receptionist, Miss Haversham, the senior Leif employed as part of the Put a Senior to Work program, two customers under dryers, and the other stylist, Deedee.

  Huh. He’d made it sound like the world would collapse from the weight of his appointments and squeezing me in was a huge ask.

  “Hi, Miss Haversham. How’s things?” I asked, leaning on the desk to sign in.

  She smoothed her snow-white bouffant away from her face and winked sensually. Miss Haversham, at seventy-five, is quite the vixen. She’s about as uninhibited as one gets when it comes to ogling and fawning—especially over Win. She loved Win. But again, who doesn’t?

  Twisting her fingers through the long gold chains she wore over her silky purple shirt, she smiled at me.

  “Things are terrific, Stevie. How’s things with that delicious man of yours?”

  See what I mean?

  I fought a chuckle. “Things are great. Really great.” If you didn’t count the fact that my BF was likely being blackmailed by bad guys who wanted him to sell drugs.

  I think…

  She reached over the desk and patted my hand with hers, a coy smile on her lips. “I hear you’ve got quite a night—”

  “Stevie!” Leif called out, making me turn around to greet him.

  Leif was an unusual character, and definitely not what one would expect when it came to a hairstylist. Win reminded me often, stereotypes were for sods, and in Leif’s case, the folks of Eb Falls had learned that quickly.

  He’d moved here to Washington to care for his ailing parents, leaving behind a lucrative career. Born and raised in Staten Island, he’d been a Hells Angel for most of his adult life and a hairstylist to the stars. Kind of an unusual combo, right? A biker/hairdresser made everyone pause.

  But man, when he’d opened his shop here in town, and the ladies and gentlemen of Eb Falls had seen what he was capable of, tunes had rapidly changed.

  He wore lots of leather vests and a do-rag, he had piercings from his eyebrows to his belly button and maybe beyond, but you won’t ever catch me asking, and he was covered in tattoos.

  And he made me squeal with absolute delight the first time he’d done my hair. I left that salon feeling like Beyoncé had inhabited my body by way of Natalie Portman. He was that good. Leif might be rough and tumble to the outsider looking in, but he knew hair and color, and I adored both him and his gruff exterior.

  His husky voice and New York accent reminded me of Harvey Fierstein’s when he rushed over to me, a dish of dye he was mixing in his hand, and greeted me with a big smile—until he saw my roots, that is.

  “You,” he said, pointing to his chair with a furrowed brow. “Sit. Immediately. Before anyone else sees you like this. Mary mother of all things, you need this.”

  I giggled and gave him a quick hug and kiss on the cheek before waving to Miss Haversham and making my way to Leif’s chair. As I plunked down in it, I peered at my roots under the harsher lights of the salon.

  “Oh, c’mon. It’s not that bad, Leif. It’s just a touch-up.”

  He set the dye mixture down on a ledge under the big mirror, cranked up the height of my chair and began running his fingers through my shoulder-length hair.

  “Not that bad? Says you, my friend. It looks like you sprouted fargin’ stripes.” Clapping my shoulders with his beefy, ringed fingers, he smiled at my reflection in the mirror. “Buckle up and prepare for the long, bumpy ride, Sunshine—we’re gonna be here a while.”

  Now I frowned. I didn’t think I looked that bad. Jeez. But Leif was the genius when it came to my hair. I’d been trying to grow it out a bit, and he’d helped me do that while keeping my hair healthy and shiny.

  So I bit my tongue.

  Shaking out a black cutting cape with a snap, he put it around my neck and cracked his knuckles, his brown eyes critically looking over every inch of my head.

  He put his hand under a thatch of strands, his expression almost one of disgust. “Have you been conditioning like I told you, Stevie?”

  “I’ve been washing every two days just like you said and deep conditioning once a week,” I defended. I knew how to follow rules.

  But Leif frowned at me, his round face scrunching up, making his inky-black goatee flutter. “Really? Then why is your hair as dry as overcooked turkey?”

  I blinked. Wowee. This felt a lot more like an interrogation from my old pal Starsky than it did a fun trip to the salon.

  I took another look at my med-brown hair, falling down around my face with some wispy bangs, a bit limp from the heat but still pretty shiny, and pursed my lips.

  “But I did everything you said. I followed your instructions to a tee,” I whimpered.

  Leif grunted and raised a pierced eyebrow. “Humph. Well, we have our work cut out for us because it needs to be perfect. That’s all I gotta say about that.”

  He set about grabbing his foils for my highlights and lowlights, his expression one of determination as though he were about to tackle rebuilding the Sistine Chapel from the ground up.

  Perfect? This didn’t sound a lot like the Leif I knew. The Leif I knew was definitely a perfectionist, meticulous every time, but I wasn’t sure I understood why my hair needed to be perfect.

  You know what? I think I’m just having a really weird day. It has to be me. Everyone can’t feel this off, can they? Every single person I’ve run into today has felt all wrong. It must be me. It must.

  As Leif began to part and separate chunks of my hair with the end of his comb, slapping color on each strand and wrapping it in foil, Marissa, one of the three estheticians he had working with him, and Amy, his nail tech, came out from the back room.

  “Hi, ladies,” I greeted them as Leif turned my chair toward the big picture window facing the street.

  “Stevie!” Marissa approached with a wave, buttoning up her esthetician’s jacket. “How are you?” she asked, only seconds before she got a good gander at my eyebrows.

  I think I heard her gasp a little when she used her thumb to smooth them.

  Yep. It definitely had to be me. Rather than question the weirdness of every conversation I’d had with another human being today, I decided to go with it.

  “I’m good, thanks, and from the look on your face, we’re going to need a weed whacker and some good old-fashioned grit to get the job done. Am I right?”

  Marissa chuckled, tucking her chocolatey-brown hair back up into its severe bun. “Something
like that. The usual, right?”

  I nodded with a firm bob of my partially foiled head. “Do whatever it takes. Break out the hedge clippers if you have to. I’m ready.”

  Amy, a petite blonde with a toothy smile and nails so long, I wondered how she took care of business when she used the facilities, but also a nail-tech whiz, followed Marissa over, carrying her kit.

  She grabbed my hand and began inspecting my nails with an all-too-familiar frown. “Hi, Stevie. Good to see you. It’s been a while, huh?” she asked pleasantly, which was her way of saying my fake gel nails had grown out and I’d neglected them.

  I mimicked my best guilty expression. “It has. But in my defense, it’s been a busy summer. Do we need to break out the chainsaw and some sandpaper? Because I have a hot date with my man tonight, and if this is going to take longer than usual, I might need to postpone until we can block out a chunk of time for an overhaulin’,” I joked.

  Amy giggled, tucking her golden hair behind her ears. “Well, we can’t have you going on a hot date with someone as dashing as Win with peeling nail polish, now can we? Do you mind if I start while you’re in the chair? Leif? Is that okay? Will I be in the way?”

  Leif sucked in his cheeks and shook his head. “I’m almost done. She has to sit for twenty minutes or so. By all means, let the magic-making begin.”

  Now I needed magic? Sheesh. I hope they weren’t selling self-esteem.

  As Amy examined closer, she clucked her tongue and grimaced. “You do know we need a whole new set of nails, don’t you? I’ll have to soak the old ones off. You in?”

  “Whatever it takes to make me look like I haven’t been locked away in someone’s basement.”

  She laughed again and pulled her portable desk to the salon chair, motioning for me to place my arm on the surface. As she soaked cotton balls in acetone and began placing them on my fingertips, wrapping them in foil, Marissa looked pained.

  Running her fingers over her temple, she asked, “Stevie? I just got a text from my daughter’s daycare. She’s got a fever. But I can still do your eyebrows if you don’t mind me doing them while you’re in the chair.”