It hadn’t started out that way, but Mag wasn’t about to ruin her reputation and cop to joining the race just to get free advertising for Balms and Bygones. “Yes, we did.”
“Good. I’m glad to see you’re keeping your skills honed. And now I need to make use of your investigative abilities. There’s another crime that needs solving.”
Mag raised an eyebrow. “Does this have anything to do with your death?” She minced no words.
“My death?” Roma let loose another trilling laugh. “No, I wasn’t murdered. I just happened to wake up dead the other morning. Took me a moment to realize it, but I’ll tell you I’m not lamenting the loss of my aching hips.”
Asking any woman her age is a no-no, but looking at her, Clara would have put Roma in the ninety-something range.
“Being dead is positively pain-free, and once this whole business has been wrapped up I’ll happily follow the light and find out what comes next.”
“You know I’ll help if I’m able,” Max said. “Never been one to turn down a challenge, that’s for sure.” She cast a quick glance at her sister and was relieved to see Clara nodding her agreement, even if her motivation stemmed from the desire to rid the house of a talkative old ghost rather than help one of her sister’s old friends.
The Balefire sisters settled into chairs around the table that held Mag’s favorite crystal ball and waited for Roma to jump into the story. Instead, the old ghost gave a pointed glance at the table, and then at Mag.
“Lost, eh?”
So rarely did Mag find herself on the receiving end of a well-deserved dressing down, her face flushed a dull red, and she mumbled an apology in hopes of staving off the tirade. “I meant to give it back.”
“What am I missing?” Clara looked from one to the other.
“This”—Roma reached to touch the crystal and then made a face when her hand went right through it—“was my great aunt Lavinia’s second favorite crystal ball, the one she used when she taught me to gaze. Many an hour I’ve spent peering into its depths. I loaned it to Margaret last year. She was supposed to use it until she bought a new one, but she never gave it back.”
A lesser woman might have quailed under Roma’s unflinching stare, but Mag only grinned. “I never bought a new one, so technically, the loan is still valid. If you needed it, you could have asked for it back. It’s a fine piece, though. Just the right size, nearly perfect clarity, and that pale golden hue doesn’t put strain on the eyes. I never found the like of it, and I’ve looked.”
Roma lifted a shoulder. “I suppose it can’t be helped now. It’s not like I can take it with me. Use it well, and with my blessing. Now, can we get on with why I’m here?”
Since she couldn’t take a seat herself, Roma continued her painless pacing while delving into the reason she’d made contact.
“I know you haven’t lived in Harmony for long, but you must have heard of the Huffington family by now, no?” Roma asked.
“Yes, of course.” Clara replied. “Huffington Manor is that big white place with the columns out front, just before you pitch down into the valley. I’ve seen the name listed as donor for about a dozen different charities. So far, though, I haven’t crossed paths with any of the family.”
“That’s partly because there aren’t many of them left. Just Stephanie, the only child of the last male heir. Kennedy Huffington and his wife Josephine were killed about fifteen years ago in a tragic car accident.”
Giving a sympathetic head shake, Roma told the sad tale. “Kennedy died instantly, but Jo wasn’t wearing her seat belt. She went through the windshield, but that wasn’t the worst of it.”
Her sympathies already engaged, Clara wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the rest.
“They had a daughter named Stephanie who was in the back seat and she saw the whole thing. When the authorities arrived, they found her cradling her mother’s body. She was bruised and shaken, but otherwise unharmed. Such a traumatic experience.”
“What happened to her? The girl, I mean.”
“She went to live with Kennedy’s sister, Buffy.”
“Wait, you’re telling me there’s a Buffy Huffington out there?” Despite the gravity of the situation, Mag just couldn’t let that one go.
Roma shot her a quelling look, “Not anymore. Huffington was her maiden name, and she was married by then. Anyway, she passed away two years ago. Now it’s just Stephanie and Buffy’s husband, John Masters, and there’s a cousin from Jo’s side of the family, but I guess she doesn’t count as a Huffington, so technically, Stephanie is the last in line.”
The poor thing, Clara thought, so young to have seen so much tragedy.
“Anyhow, Josephine was a client of mine. Lots of them had the sight in her line, gypsy people they were, but not a breath of the gift in her. So, every month like clockwork she’d show up for a reading."
Roma shook her head and her voice pitched lower, "Pity she didn’t always listen, or she might still be alive. Used to bring Stephanie with her, and the girl had a little something in the way of talent. Raw and unfocused, but a good base.”
Mag circled a hand at Roma to hurry the story along and then shivered when the dead psychic directed a chilling blast her way.
“Once Jo died,” Roma continued, casting glare at her old friend, “I figured I’d never see Stephanie again. Not if Buffy had any say. But then, it must have been six or seven years later, she showed up on my doorstep a grown woman, and I swear, for a solid thirty seconds I thought she was her mother’s ghost.” Roma stopped talking, her already misty eyes shimmering at the memory.
“So what’s the mystery?” Mag asked, impatient.
“Do you have somewhere else to be, Margaret? Something more important to do? Always one step ahead and raring to go. But this is probably the last story I’m going to get to tell, and I’ll take as long as I please.”
Very few people had the guts to stand up to her sister like that, and Clara wished she’d had a chance to meet the living version of Roma and pry a few Mag stories out of her in private. An admiring smile played around her lips.
“Stephanie picked up right where Josephine left off, dropping in on a regular basis to seek guidance from the spirit realm. Never could get her parents to come through, though I know that’s what she hoped for. I told her it’s better to know they’ve moved on and found peace, but I know she still fostered hope. People do sometimes.”
Clara caught the look that Roma flickered toward Mag and glanced over to see her sister flinch just a little. Who had her sister been unable to contact? One more question for the Secrets of Mag file.
“About a year ago, Stephanie met a man named Brad and I saw the cobwebs lift for the first time since the accident. The happy just glowed out of her, and about six months later, she got engaged. My guides approved the match, and I thought her future was secure.”
Roma ignored the sigh Mag heaved and finally got to the crux of the matter.
“Then, about a week ago, Stephanie showed up looking like she’d been run over by a truck. Brad had packed up and left town with no warning, no goodbye, nothing but a lousy note that didn’t explain a thing. Stephanie couldn’t accept it. Too familiar, I think, the feeling of abandonment. She insisted he would never do something like that, and I could see the internal struggle raging inside her. I also sensed danger.”
Roma stopped talking, and looked expectantly toward Mag. “Aren’t you going to ask what the danger was?”
“I was keeping my lips zipped, like you told me to, Roma.” Came Mag’s passive-aggressive reply. “And I’m assuming you don’t know, or you wouldn’t be here.”
“Well, you’re right about that.” Roma allowed. “But I think Stephanie felt it too. She said she’d been having nightmares that didn’t feel like dreams, and was beginning to doubt her own sanity. I know it’s not much to go on, but I didn’t have a chance to delve any further and now I’m basically useless. That’s where you come in.”
Paws thundered on the s
tairs and two cats burst into the back room of the shop with their tails all puffed up and their backs arched. Neither one batted an eye at Roma’s indistinct form.
Seeing no one else around, Pyewacket shrugged off her Siamese cat form as if it were a coat she wore. And maybe it was. If there was an origin story for how familiars gained the ability to slip from cat to human and back again, they kept it a tightly-guarded secret.
All tawny and golden and annoyed, Pye fixed her crystal-blue gaze on her bonded companion, Clara. “There’s a ghost dog upstairs, and it will not stop barking.” She jerked her head toward Jinx, still in cat form, and sitting on Mag’s feet. “You know how he gets around dogs.”
At the beginning of summer, Mrs. Green, the neighbor from two houses down, had added a few goldfish to the water feature in her backyard. Fascinated, Jinx had taken to sneaking over and watching them swim in lazy circles. Then Mrs. Green’s daughter dropped off little Harley, a miniature schnauzer with a huge personality. Harley had only been defending his territory from an intruder when his sudden barking startled Jinx so badly he fell into the pond.
It might have been an easier sell if Harley hadn’t decided Jinx needed rescuing and jumped in after him. In the end, Clara had to yank the wet dog and the wet cat out of the pond and conjure two more fish to replace the ones that hadn’t survived the kerfuffle.
Since then, Jinx developed a twitch every time he heard a dog bark.
“I assume he’s with you.” Both a statement and a question directed toward Roma in Mag’s driest tone.
Roma looked anywhere but at Mag. “His name is Whizzer, and it’s a delicate situation.”
The sound of his name must have carried up the stairs, because Whizzer came running. He skidded around the corner straight toward Roma, who instinctively took a step back even though she was in no danger of being knocked over by the spectral beast.
Losing her balance, Roma crumpled like a piece of paper and landed on her butt, smack dab in the middle of the Balefire. For a split second, a panicked look crossed her face, but when she realized there was no harm done besides her essence turning a lovely shade of purple, Roma let out a laugh and hopped to her feet.
Jinx, however, climbed Mag’s leg and earned himself a reprimand nearly as sharp as his claws before he took the hint and changed to human form.
“Stop,” he commanded as soon as he’d changed. His voice rang with authority, and Whizzer obeyed. Dropping to ghostly haunches, the Labrador retriever sat and stared up at Jinx with adoring eyes, his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth.
“I think he likes you.” The man’s voice coming from right behind her—a little too close if anyone had asked her, though no one did—made Clara’s heart lurch and she took a hasty step forward. And then she felt like a jerk. What if the ghost thought he’d scared her? Well, he did scare her, but not in the there’s-a-ghost-and-now-I’m-creeped-out way.
Really, how terrifying could he be? She turned to look at him, and it was just as she’d suspected: he looked like a slightly transparent, middle-aged accountant.
Silence fell over the strange tableau while the four living contemplated the three dead, and continued until Whizzer lived up to his name by casually strolling over to Clara’s workbench and lifting his leg to loose a stream of doggy ectoplasm all over the upright support.
Pyewacket wrinkled her nose and still managed to come off looking regal. It was one of her gifts—probably something to do with her feline pedigree.
“Is there something you want to tell me, Roma?” Having more history with the medium and her methods, Mag had picked up on some nuance of the situation that had gone right past her sister.
Roma’s feet, clad in a pair of terry-cloth mules, hovered a few inches off the floor as if the dimension between this world and the next occupied a slightly different plane. “I wasn’t sure, you see. It’s not like I’ve had any personal experience from this side of the veil, and I thought … well, it doesn’t matter what I thought because I was wrong.”
Mag’s patience lasted long enough for Roma to mutter a few more incoherent, half-finished thoughts, and then she turned to the second ghost. “You. What is your name and why are you here?”
He blinked twice and bought some time to think by taking off his glasses and polishing them on his shirt tail.
“Name’s Harold and she”—he indicated Roma with a bob of his head in her direction—“was helping me figure out why I’m still hanging around when I should be lounging on a cloud. I thought she knew what she was doing, but now she’s stuck here the same as me. Ironic, isn’t it?”
Chapter Three
A snort crawled up the back of Mag's throat, but she swallowed it before it popped out and pissed Roma off. Not that there was much the ghost could do even if she was mad. Tossing around the ectoplasm wasn't likely to impress Mag given the things she'd seen during her lifetime.
“Fine,” Roma said. “Tease me if you must, but apparently there’s some overlap between Harold’s unfinished business and mine. You can wipe that smirk off your face, too. It won't be so funny when you end up with a houseful of permanent guests. Looks like you'll have to help me help them, and then we can all move on together.”
“That dog,” Jinx said, pointing to the doe-eyed Whizzer, “seems to have a thing for me, and he is not staying here so you’re going to do whatever it takes to get rid of him. He’s looking at me like I’m his soul mate, or a juicy bone, or something.”
Every so often, Jinx showed there was a spine under all the white fur and laziness. His transformation during their vacation at the beach had finally answered Clara’s question of how a firecracker like her sister had ended up with such a damp squib of a familiar. There was a tiger in Jinx’s tank; he just required a big push to show his stripes.
Then something Roma said clicked in Clara’s head. “A houseful of permanent guests?”
Mag sighed. “How many did you bring with you?” She was beginning to think Madame Roselda had known good and well what her gifts were and had had the presence of mind to scamper off before Roma could make her use them.
“Only a few,” Roma hedged. “Whizzer should be the worst of them. He's been with me for a month now and I don't have a clue what he needs.”
Whizzer deposited another glowing stain on the edge of the hearth. “He needs to learn to control his bladder. I assume all of his”—Clara took a second to choose the right word—“essence will go with him when he leaves?”
Roma shrugged.
“Okay, then what’s the deal with Harold?” Since he was staring at her with nearly the same look on his face that Whizzer had for Jinx, Clara wanted him gone. Now. Before she had to imagine him watching her while she was sleeping or something.
Roma shrugged again.
Turning to Harold, Clara tried a technique that had worked well for her in the past.
“What’s your full name?” She fired off the question, speaking quickly to indicate he should answer in the same way. When he didn’t, she snapped her fingers at him. “Don’t think about it, just answer quickly.” Besides, who had to put that much thought into such an easy question?
“Harold Hardy Loon.” Oh, that was why. Clara moved on.
“What did you do for a living?”
“International Data Manager.”
“Married?”
“Divorced.”
“Favorite movie?”
“Die Hard.” What was it with that movie and men?
“What was the name of your first pet?”
“Spinner.”
“Were you murdered?”
“No, who would want to kill me? I was the most boring person on the planet. And that’s a direct quote from my ex-wife. I fell off a stepladder cleaning the gutters.”
She led Harold through a series of questions, making each one more complex as she went, and firing them off rapidly until he answered without thinking. Then she hit him with the money shot.
“What’s your unfinished business?”
“I was watching reruns of Dallas and I never got to the part where they said who shot JR.”
Even in incorporeal form, Mag would have sworn Harold’s cheeks pinked at the admission.
Being the nice person she was, Clara caught the giggle before it escaped and hurt Harold’s feelings, and she gave her sister a stern look warning her to do the same. Still, her lips twitched and she had to bite them to make it stop.
“It was Kristin. And she was pregnant with his baby.” Dredging that bit of trivia up from her memory, Clara gave him the details.
“Kristin? Huh. I never would have guessed.” And with those his parting words, Harold’s outline brightened and turned fuzzy.
When the last sparkling mote of him faded into the light, Clara gave in to the fit of laughter she’d been holding back.
“I’m sorry, Roma,” she gasped. “I don’t mean to make fun of what you do.” Tears streaming, Clara’s stomach ached, but every time she thought the fit had passed, she remembered the look on Harold’s face and started up again.
Used to being the one indulging in inappropriate humor, Mag enjoyed her footing on the high road for once and tried to diffuse by asking Roma, “Does this kind of thing happen a lot?”
“This would be my first television-cliffhanger crossing. You get your old standards: final message for a loved one; the will is in the pages of my favorite book; here’s the safe combination. That kind of thing. Then there’s the revenge for murder set. Those are my least favorite. They tend to be too aggressive in their demand for restitution. Takes some work to get that type to cross over, but I don’t see many murder victims, so that’s a mercy.”
As if in response to Roma’s comment, another tremor ran through the house hard enough to clack Clara’s teeth together. Boxes walked to the edges of shelves, and a couple of the smaller ones fell. The tinkling sound of broken glass coming from the shop firmed Mag’s mouth into a grim line. A certain amount of breakage was all part of doing business, but this wasn’t that.
Haunted by Murder Page 2
