The Gold Touch That Went Cattywampus

by Amy Boyles

  Roan grinned. “Oh, and only if you have purple hair.”

  “And only if you run a bed-and-breakfast and serve me homemade cinnamon rolls in bed every morning.”

  He slapped his hand on the counter. “Done.” Roan slid the spatula under the beef medallions and slipped them onto a paper towel. He eyed my salad that I’d filled with ripe tomatoes, sliced carrots and cucumbers. “I’d say no matter what, we make a great team.”

  I smiled. “I agree.”

  Roan tapped his hips onto mine. “I say we do this for a while.”

  “At least a week.”

  “I say, forever,” he murmured before sliding past me.

  My heart stuttered. Did he say forever?

  I shot Roan a curious look, but his back was to me as he mixed flour, water and seasonings. I wanted to ask him if he’d really said forever, but surely I hadn’t heard him correctly.

  Roan and I had known each other for months, not years. Sure, those months added up to over a year, but who was counting?

  Maybe Roan was counting. Maybe Roan had been thinking about forever when all I was thinking about was how to catch the next ghost.

  But he’d never said anything to me about it. Never before had Roan mentioned us spending forever together. Well, that had changed. He’d just said something about it now.

  How was I supposed to respond to that? Was I supposed to say, yes, let’s spend forever together? But I hadn’t said anything. In fact, he’d said the words moments ago, and I’d let them hang in the air, hovering like black ink on a white page.

  I was going to deal with this head-on. “Did you say what I think you said?”

  Roan stirred the gravy that he’d made from the bits of beef and fat left over in the pan. “What do you think I said?”

  “That we should work together forever. Is that what you said? As in forever, forever?”

  He smirked with amusement. “As opposed to not-forever, forever?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Roan opened his mouth to answer when the doorbell rang. Great. Just when I was getting to the heart of the conversation, we were interrupted.

  Roan pulled the apron over his head. “Ah, our guests have arrived.”

  I pointed a menacing finger at him. “You’re not getting out of this conversation.”

  He faced me as he walked backward toward the front door, his arms out. “I wasn’t planning on it. We’ve got a lot of conversing to do.”

  “I’m not so sure about that.”

  He winked. “I am.”

  I wanted to argue, but for once I found myself speechless. Roan opened the door and greeted Mr. Hodges, Ruth and Alice for dinner.

  “Roan,” Betty said proudly as we sat around the table nibbling on beef medallions, “this meal is so delicious I never would’ve known you didn’t cook it in a cast-iron pot.”

  Roan swiped a napkin over his mouth. “Coming from you, Betty, I’m going to take that as a compliment.”

  “It is,” Pepper said, “trust me.”

  “Mr. Hodges,” Roan started.

  “Homer,” Mr. Hodges corrected. “Call me Homer.”

  I nearly fell out of my chair. Mr. Hodges had a first name, and it was Homer. All this time I’d never known that.

  I glanced at Ruth and saw that her jaw hung limply to her chest while Alice smiled proudly.

  “Homer,” Roan said, “You’re the person who first connected Blissful and me to Axel.”

  Homer nodded toward Axel. “That’s right. I’d heard about Axel’s…abilities.”

  “You mean you heard he was a wizard,” Betty said, almost snarling.

  You could have heard a pin drop. Alice shot Homer a worried look. Ruth grimaced. Pepper’s gaze cut from Homer to Axel, and Axel wiped the side of his mouth with a napkin. All the while, Betty sat chewing on beef medallions, not a shadow of worry crossing her face.

  “Can someone pass the mashed potatoes?” she asked.

  Axel handed them to her. “I believe Mr. Hodges had a rather difficult pest in his backyard, one I was able to help him with.”

  Pepper eyed Axel with suspicion. “A pest?”

  Axel leaned back in his chair. He had the look of someone who was about to spill a secret that few knew of.

  “Mostly I’m a private investigator,” Axel explained. “Everyone knows that about me. I help people discover things or find people. When it comes to my wife and all the trouble we seem to get into together”—he took Pepper’s hand and kissed it—“it seems I play detective more than anything.”

  “Ain’t that the truth,” Betty said.

  “Is it?” Alice said. “Well, Blissful plays detective, too. You wouldn’t believe the cold cases she’s already solved. All we needed was a little bit of ghost help to do so. Of course, Axel and Pepper helped that one time, too. You remember? The killer was that woman with all those stuffed animals in her house? That was a strange one.”

  “Alice,” Ruth said gently, “I don’t think that’s the point of this discussion. I believe Axel was telling us about a pest.”

  “Something was digging holes in my garden at night,” Homer explained. “I searched for an armadillo. I even searched for a groundhog. But I couldn’t find neither of ’em. Then one night I stayed up late, looking to see what it was. I sat on my back porch, a shotgun strapped over my legs.”

  “Smart man,” Betty said. “That’s what I would’ve done.”

  Homer scrubbed a palm over the light stubble on his face. “Only what I found wasn’t an animal that I was familiar with. This thing—this creature, arrived with green fog at its feet. It dug into my soil with claws this long.” He gestured about four inches from the ends of his fingers. “Sharpest, most deadliest things I’ve ever seen. And the teeth on this monster—they were twice as long as a beaver’s. The thing was covered in fur from its head to its feet, and it stank something fierce. I knew whatever I was dealing with, it wasn’t anything from this world.”

  “Mmm,” Roan said. “Sounds pretty terrifying.”

  Homer nodded toward Axel. “Needless to say, I didn’t mess with the creature that night, but I watched as it tore into the ground, throwing rocks the size of bricks over its shoulder as if they weighed no more than paper. Soon as it was gone, I hopped on the Internet and started searching for someone who could help me.”

  “And that was you?” I asked Axel.

  “That was me,” he said. “Soon as I spoke to Mr. Hodges, I figured we were dealing with a creature that had been cursed, or a person who’d been cursed and turned into an animal. So I arrived to find out.”

  “And I never knew anything about this?” Pepper said stiffly.

  “We weren’t dating then,” Axel replied, a smile tugging on his lips. “It was no secret.” He squeezed her hand. “This was several years ago.”

  “What was the creature?” Roan asked.

  “I watched the yard with Homer one night,” Axel said. “I had my suspicions, but I had to be sure.”

  “I’m curious,” I asked. “What did you find?”

  Axel raked his fingers through his dark hair. “The creature was exactly as Homer said. It was larger than a beaver and walked on its hind legs. It dug with long claws, and its teeth—you wouldn’t believe how long they were. He was not exaggerating. As soon as the creature stepped into the moonlight, I knew what it was—a cursed animal, changed for one reason or another, to torment Mr. Hodges.”

  Alice’s voice filled with surprise. “Why would anyone torment Mr. Hodges? He’s the nicest man I know.”

  Mr. Hodges stared bashfully down at his napkin. “So that I wouldn’t win the annual beautiful yard award.”

  Alice gasped. “That’s horrible. You work so hard on that garden.”

  He smiled at her. “I know. It keeps me busy.”

  “So what was it? The animal?” Ruth asked.

  Axel wagged his finger. “It was a cursed groundhog, larger than the normal-sized creature but not necessarily aggressive. It’s w
hole purpose was to dig up the yard.”

  “So what did you do?” Pepper asked.

  Axel shrugged. “What any man in my situation would have done—I changed it back and placed a spell of protection on Mr. Hodges’s yard so that he wouldn’t have to endure another creature like that.”

  Roan raised his glass of wine. “I propose a toast—to our guests and to defeating pests that dig up yards.”

  “Here, here,” Axel said.

  We raised our glasses and drank. My gaze darted to Roan, who I caught watching me. He winked as he sipped the golden liquid.

  I couldn’t help wondering if he was thinking the same thing as me. Did he really mean forever? There was one way to find out—ask him. But did I want to know the answer? Did he really mean what he had said? And if he didn’t, why did my heart ache at that thought?

  Blissful

  “I’m telling you, I could drive one of these in my sleep,” Betty argued.

  Dinner was over. It had been a nice affair. We discussed all things witchy with our guests, while they asked me about ghosts and ghost hunting. Pepper, Axel and Betty seemed as intrigued with stalking spirits as I was about witches and their powers.

  For once it was nice to have someone other than Ruth and Alice to chat with about ghosts. I loved those two, but sometimes I needed to hang out with folks closer to my own age.

  But right now was not looking to be one of those times. Betty sat in the driver’s seat of the side-by-side. She had one hand on the key to turn it while her foot was raised, ready to pump the gas to flood the carburetor with fuel.

  Why, oh why had Ruth driven the all-terrain vehicle to my house?

  Ruth crossed her arms and looked at Betty doubtfully. “Drive this? I heard you almost crashed another vehicle.”

  Betty rubbed her chin. “I was just getting warmed up. This looks more my size.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather ride a broom?” Alice asked earnestly.

  I bit back a laugh while Betty scowled. “We ride cast-iron skillets, thank you. While I’m here in this namby-pamby world, I’d like to experience the things that y’all do and this”—she patted the dash—“looks like fun.”

  “But I was supposed to practice for the race,” Alice whimpered.

  “At night?” I asked. “Shouldn’t you do that in daylight when, you know, you won’t kill anybody because you can’t see them?”

  “Oh, I’ve got a solution to that.” Alice pulled out a pair of dark glasses and slid them over her regular bifocals. “These babies cut down the glare. Makes it so that I can see like a twenty-year-old at night.”

  “They do help,” Homer said. He pulled out his own pair and slipped them over his ears. “You’d be surprised, Blissful.”

  This was too much. Seeing Homer and Alice in large, dark-rimmed glasses and listening as the old women argued as to whether or not Betty got to test-drive the side-by-side made me think I’d seen it all—literally.

  Roan leaned down and whispered in my ear. His breath tickled my skin, leaving a warm spot that crept over my flesh. “Well, well, well, what do we have here?”

  “Don’t ask,” I replied.

  Pepper stepped in. “Betty, do you think you should drive? You’ve had a glass of wine.”

  “Listen, kid,” Betty snarled. “I could outdrive you any day of the week.”

  Pepper lifted her hands as if to say she gave up.

  Ruth sighed. From the sound I knew she would relent. “All right, feel free to take her for a spin. But please be careful. Alice, do you want to go with her so that you can show Betty how everything works?”

  The engine sputtered to life.

  “I don’t need any help,” Betty shouted over the roar of ATV. “I can handle her.”

  She gunned the engine, and the vehicle jumped backward. Alice yelped. The rest of us standing on the curb took a large step away from the ATV.

  “Oh, reverse,” Betty said, laughing. “I’ve got it!”

  Next thing I knew, the gears clicked as she shifted into forward and Betty was motoring off down the street, the oily stench of gasoline trailing behind her.

  Betty’s laugh could be heard down the block.

  “She sure is enjoying herself,” I said.

  “I just hope she doesn’t wreck it,” Ruth mumbled.

  I patted her shoulder. “She’ll be fine. After all, Betty didn’t kill us today when she drove.”

  Ruth’s face paled. “I don’t like the way you said that. Not much confidence in your voice.”

  I smiled as wide as I could, which made me feel like a goon. “I’m sure you’ll get your ATV back in one piece. How’s that?”

  Pop!

  Our heads swiveled in Betty’s direction. She had the ATV teetering on the driver’s side, holding a wheelie for a good fifty feet before the vehicle dropped back on all four tires.

  “For someone worried about a piece of a heart,” I murmured, “she seems to be taking it in stride.”

  “Oh, she’s worried.” Pepper stepped up beside me and raked her fingers through her hair. “Normally she never acts like this. Normally she’d be scouring the land looking for this man who can turn objects into gold.”

  “So you’re concerned about her?” I asked, keeping my voice gentle. I saw no reason to add more stress onto Pepper.

  She nibbled her bottom lip for a moment. “More so than I want to show.”

  Her gaze trailed Betty as she popped another wheelie before turning the ATV back in our direction. “I just don’t want her to know I’m worried.”

  I patted her shoulder. “Since we can’t go gallivanting through every home in Haunted Hollow looking for the gold man, I may be able to find a way to get us some rather unorthodox help.”

  Curiosity flared in Pepper’s eyes. “What kind of unorthodox help?”

  From beside me, Roan spoke. “The kind you can’t see.”

  As Betty cackled gleefully, sounding more and more like a witch, I nodded. “If y’all will excuse me, I’ll go see what kind of help I can stir up.”

  Roan nodded toward the ATV. “Will Ruth let you borrow that?”

  My gaze darted to Ruth, who scowled deeply. Alice looked on, her lower jaw practically resting on her chest in shock.

  I clicked my tongue. “After watching Betty, I don’t think Ruth will ever let anyone drive her side-by-side ever again.”

  Pepper and Roan laughed as I headed off to grab my vehicle and find some spirits willing to help.

  I arrived at the Oaks Cemetery a few minutes later. I killed the engine of my nearly antique Land Cruiser and popped open the driver’s side door.

  An unearthly breeze stirred, lifting the hairs off the back of my neck. It was dark and only a few streetlamps brightened the cemetery, which I supposed was appropriate. I mean, why shine a light on the dead at night?

  Nighttime was for resting, not that these spirits would know the difference. They didn’t know what resting was.

  “Psst,” came a voice from behind me.

  A cold tingle worked its way down the back of my arms all the way to my feet.

  It was funny how the dead affected the living. Some people could sense a spirit when the hairs on the back of their neck soldiered to attention, others could hear them outright and still others simply saw flickers in the corners of their eyes, informing them that something else was taking up space near them.

  But me—I felt it all over, and it wasn’t a surprise to meet with a spirit in a graveyard. After all, this was why I was here, wasn’t it?

  I turned to see the Greaser from the antique store standing beneath a tree, combing his hair.

  “Hey,” he said in a husky voice.

  I groaned inwardly. Please tell me this guy wasn’t trying to hit on me. I had no patience for that.

  I folded my arms. “Yes?”

  He glanced left and right before hiking up the collar of his black jacket. “Uh, hey. Um. I need to talk to you.”

  I punched my fists in my pockets and shifted my weig
ht to my right hip. I had time to listen; I only hoped what he had to say was worth hearing. “Okay. I’m all ears.”

  “It’s about—”

  “Disarm yourself, young man!”

  Captain William Fitzpatrick Blount, Sheriff Kency Blount’s great-great-great, or whatever, grandfather, strode up in full Confederate uniform. His bayonet glinted in the moonlight as it pointed directly at the Greaser.

  “Disarm himself?” I asked the captain. “What are you talking about?”

  Captain Blount surged forward. “Madam, I must protect you from that black shiny thing in the man’s hand. It appears to be a weapon that could inflict serious damage to your delicate nature.”

  Delicate nature, my foot, but if the captain wanted to be chivalrous, who was I to stop him?

  But there was still the matter of the weapon. I peered into the Greaser’s hand and released a belly laugh.

  Captain Blount gasped at my reaction. “Just what, Madam, do you find so humorous?”

  I gestured toward the spirit. “That isn’t a weapon; it’s a comb! Surely you’re familiar with those, Captain. You should have used one while you were alive.”

  The captain sputtered. “Well, in this light it looked like a dagger.” He slipped his bayonet into its sheath and bowed. “Please pardon me for trying to protect your physical being.”

  I smiled widely, more from amusement than anything else. “I appreciate you trying to protect me, Captain. I really do. Now, that man you thought was about to harm me, was actually about to tell me something.”

  My gaze darted to where the Greaser had stood, beneath the tree, but he wasn’t there. The spirit had disappeared.

  “Good riddance,” Captain Blount snarled. “That man is no good. Why, he knows the rules as well as any of them—unless you were buried in this soil, you have no right to be here. We don’t take kindly to strangers.”

  “Now, William, you know that isn’t true. Y’all let me in here, after all. All Blissful had to do was twist your arms.”

  Francine Spivey floated up. She was a rotund woman with a a shock of white hair that she smoothed with ruby-red fingernails. Her lips were the same shade of red and puckered big when the captain made eye contact with her.