Drop Dead Beauty

by Wendy Roberts

  Then Rudie threw back his head and giggled maniacally, making Sadie believe he was already traveling down that road to an asylum regardless of his little baggie.

  Swiftly, Rudie became all business. He rubbed his hands together and, with an eager smile, went to work over his cauldron.

  “It’s a simple potion, really.” He poured in green flakey leaves that remind Sadie of the stuff she smoked in college. “This is frogwort.”

  He put the bottle down and picked up the jar that contained a black powdery substance. After unscrewing the lid of the vessel, he reached inside and pulled out a tiny metal shovel. Next he used the shovel and scooped up three helpings of the black powder and added it to the other powder, announcing, “This is graveyard dirt.”

  “Like, from a cemetery?” Sadie asked.

  “Not just any cemetery,” Rudie said. “This dirt is from the grave of a known witch buried in Highgate Cemetery in London.”

  “You went all the way to England for that?” Sadie asked, awed.

  “No. I don’t have time to go gallivanting all over the world for ingredients. I ordered it and had it shipped by FedEx.”

  Rudie put aside the jar of black dirt and picked up the remaining container. He put on rubber gloves and then, using his thumbs, he popped the lid off the small metal canister and retrieved an even smaller corked bottle from inside. It took some wriggling but he managed to remove the cork. Immediately a putrid stench filled the air.

  “Oh my God!” Sadie pinched her nose and blinked her eyes. “What the hell is that?”

  “Devil’s dung,” he replied matter-of-factly. Rudie shook out a small amount of golden powder from the bottle on top of the other herbs in the cauldron. “That ought to do it.”

  He recorked the bottle and placed it back inside its can and pushed the metal lid firmly back in place. He removed his gloves and chucked them into a nearby wastebasket. The smell in the room had lessened only slightly by his closing the herb bottle. Next, Rudie used a large wood spoon to stir the small amount of herbs. While he stirred he murmured something softly under his breath.

  “I understand that lots of people believe herbs serve a medicinal purpose, but I don’t see how mixing frogwort, graveyard dirt, and devil’s dung will solve my problems,” Sadie said, struggling to keep the cynicism out of her voice.

  “They won’t do anything on their own,” Maeva said. “If that was the case, anyone with an herb garden would be making potions. The ingredients need to be empowered.”

  “That’s right,” Rudie said. He nodded to Maeva. “Will you help?”

  “Of course.”

  Maeva stepped forward and held her hands over the cauldron of mixed greenery and stinky stuff. Then she began to hum the theme song to The Wizard of Oz because apparently show tunes helped the medium get in touch with her inner talents. As often as Sadie had seen Maeva in action, she still couldn’t quite get used to it.

  Rudie held his hands above Maeva’s and closed his eyes. As Maeva continued to hum, Rudie began to chant. Abruptly he stopped and opened one eye to regard Sadie.

  “Are you feeling left out? I could totally write out the spell for you and you could recite it along with me,” he offered. “The more the merrier and all that.”

  “I’m good,” Sadie responded quickly. “You go ahead and do your thing. I’m happy to watch.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Rudie resumed chanting, Maeva continued humming, and Sadie inched a little closer to the door in case lightning was about to strike or flames began to shoot up from the cauldron or in case the spirit of some long-dead witch appeared and demanded the return of the topsoil from her grave.

  Maeva stopped her humming but began moving her hands in a fluid, circular motion over top of the cauldron.

  Then Rudie began to recite:

  “The presence that stands upon the stairs,

  The unseen hands that move the chairs,

  The lights that play across the wall,

  The stains that stay,

  The plates that fall,

  The mist, the chill, the wandering scents,

  This gentle spell must speed them hence.

  What is dark be filled with light, remove all spirits from Sadie’s sight,

  Allow this enchanted protection purse,

  To keep her talent from being her curse.”

  Rudie and Maeva clapped their hands loudly and simultaneously at the end, causing Sadie to jump nearly five feet in the air. After congratulatory high-fives between Rudie and Maeva, the two concluded that all had gone well. Sadie stood there looking and feeling uncomfortable and having no idea how they could tell what had gone well. All she knew was that the smell of the devil’s dung had permeated her sinuses and suddenly she had a craving for sushi.

  Sadie watched as Rudie scooped the contents from the cauldron into a black flannel bag and then pulled the drawstring tightly closed. Next he went to a shelf and withdrew a long dark nylon cord from a shoe box. He tethered the cord around the pouch and tied it necklace-style around Sadie’s neck. It fell just between her breasts, so that a distinct and foul odor rose up to her nostrils.

  “I can’t wear this around my neck,” she insisted, her eyes beginning to water. “It reeks!”

  “Well, you don’t have to wear it all the time,” Rudie said with a shrug. “Not like me. I have to wear my banishing charm all the time or my Hex of Strife would drive me around the bend, but that’s me. You’re luckier. You can just wear yours whenever you expect to encounter a ghost at work.”

  “So when I’m on the job I can wear it and everything is kosher, but the rest of the time I’m good to go without it?”

  “Yup.”

  “Thank God!” Sadie took the pouch from around her neck and stuffed it in her purse. “Not that I don’t appreciate your hard work of course, but it won’t help my reputation for cleaning crime scenes if I smell like a cross between the worst body odor ever, rotting trash, and something a sick dog left on the carpet.”

  They left the room and Sadie again thanked Rudie for his help.

  “No problem, but I’ve got to get down to the little demons having the birthday.” He went to a corner of the room and picked up a large invoice pad. “I’ll give you a discount since any friend of Maeva’s is a friend of mine.”

  “Wait a second.” Sadie blinked hard. “I didn’t realize this was going to cost me money.”

  “Sadie . . . ,” Maeva warned. “He’s just done you a tremendous favor by seeing you on such short notice. Seeing you at all, in fact.”

  “Well, sure, but you didn’t even tell me where we were going or what we were doing, so I guess I’m just surprised. . . .”

  Rudie placed his hands on his hips. “No freebies. If I had a dead body to mop up I wouldn’t expect you to clean up for free, and if I wanted to get in touch with the dead I wouldn’t expect Maeva to help me at Madam Maeva’s Psychic Café for free either. Herbs cost money too. Not to mention my time and knowledge.”

  “Well, I guess when you put it that way . . .”

  Rudie wrote up the bill and handed it to Sadie.

  “Two hundred and fifty bucks!” she cried. “I don’t even know if it works!”

  Maeva and Rudie gasped together and looked so offended that Sadie immediately backpedaled.

  “What I mean is that you said yourself my situation is different than yours. What if my pregnancy hormones make it go all funky and, through no fault of your own, the purse thingy doesn’t work?”

  “If it requires any tweaking whatsoever,” Rudie said, narrowing his eyes, “then come back and I will adjust the spell accordingly.”

  His hard look told Sadie that she’d better pay up and shut up, so she cut him a check. A few minutes later they were back in Maeva’s car.

  “Well, that was certainly embarrassing,” Maeva grumbled as she
started the car.

  “I know! Can you believe that guy charging me two hundred and fifty smackers for a potion without even giving me a chance to see if it works?” Sadie shook her head.

  “Are you kidding me?” Maeva’s voice went up an octave and she paused with her hand on the gearshift. “You’ve just been given a gift here! Rudie sees very few people and he never sees anyone without an appointment. Do you know why he saw you today?”

  “I’m sorry,” Sadie began. “I didn’t mean to be ungrateful. I just—”

  “He saw you today because I brought you. Because you were with me,” Maeva continued, ignoring Sadie’s hasty apology. “He knows I’m very serious about what I do. He’s been to Madam Maeva’s Psychic Café and he knows that I’m not some shyster selling pie-in-the-sky guesses, looking into a fake ball of cut glass. We’re peers. And professionals. He trusted that if I was bringing someone to him directly at the last minute without an appointment that it was important to me. He was doing me a huge favor.”

  “And then I went and insulted him.” Sadie cringed. “I’m so-o-o sorry.”

  Maeva sighed, put the car in drive, and steered away from the curb.

  “I’ll cut you some slack this time because your life is in the eye of the tornado right now.”

  “You mean, my life is in the toilet.” And she meant that literally since she smelled of dung.

  “The hormones and nausea can make you crazy those first few months.” She cut her gaze sideways to Sadie while she turned a corner. “Would it make you feel better if we went to test-drive the potion to see if it works?”

  “How will we do that?”

  “I’ve gotta feed my neighbor’s cat again. You can tag along and take a look inside the pantry.”

  Sadie thought that was a good idea, and fifteen minutes later they were inside Maeva’s neighbor’s kitchen and Sadie was wearing the stinky sack around her throat.

  “Here goes nothing,” she announced, then walked inside the pantry. She stood inside the small space and turned around a couple times. “I’m feeling good. No chest pains.” She faced Maeva, who was standing in the kitchen outside the pantry. “But maybe he didn’t even show up this time.”

  “Oh he’s there.” Maeva nodded. “Although spirits don’t appear in full shape to me, I can often see a wispy outline if an apparition is present, and I can see one now.”

  Sadie left the pantry and closed the door behind her.

  “Well, that was awesome.” She rubbed her hands together and smiled. “I feel like sushi for lunch.”

  “You can’t have sushi. No raw fish while you’re pregnant.”

  “What? That’s a rip-off!”

  Sadie followed her friend back to her house, where Maeva handed her a book on pregnancy. It was open to a list of foods to avoid.

  “This should help.”

  Sadie looked over the list. It didn’t help at all. Now she was craving raw shellfish and unpasteurized cheeses.

  “You can keep the book,” Maeva told her.

  Maeva’s husband, Terry, had to head off to a catering job, so Maeva hoisted Osbert in one arm and a heavy diaper bag in the other and they headed out the door to drive Sadie home.

  “Do you really need to bring that much stuff with you wherever you go when you have a kid?” Sadie asked.

  She helped Maeva buckle in Osbert, who was fussing about being restrained.

  “You try forgetting the diaper bag one time and that’ll be the time the kid will atomic poop up his back, all over the car seat, and all over you. Or else he’ll projectile vomit strained peas. And it’s not unusual for both those things to happen at once. That bag is a lifesaver. In there are the usual diapers, wipes, and creams plus multiple changes of clothes for both of us and the phone number to an emergency help line.”

  Sadie snapped on her seatbelt.

  “I think I need the number for that emergency help line,” she told Maeva.

  “The help line is the only thing I was joking about.”

  Just then Osbert went from fussing to screaming at an operatic soprano note meant to burst the ears of trauma cleaners. Sadie began to seriously consider if she should ask Rudie to make her temporarily deaf as well.

  Chapter 6

  By the time Maeva pulled up to Sadie’s house Osbert had screamed himself hoarse and then fallen fast asleep in the backseat.

  “Do you want to come in for a while?” Sadie asked.

  “No. I need to keep the car moving or he’ll wake up and start screaming again. He’s going through a fussy stage.”

  In Sadie’s opinion Osbert had been born fussy, but usually her godson was relatively good when she was around.

  “Just as well,” Sadie said. “I need to try out my ghost-banishing potion at that suicide clean I delayed. Thanks for everything. Sorry again if I embarrassed you in front of Rudie.”

  “No problem. Once you become a mom you’ll realize that humiliation is another one of life’s perks.”

  Oh joy.

  Once inside the house Sadie dropped her purse and pregnancy book on the coffee table and then said hello to Hairy and Dean Petrovich.

  “I’ve been waiting around for you for hours,” Dean grumbled.

  “Sorry. Ghost problems.” She eyeballed him warily.

  “What’s that smell?” He sniffed the air. “Did you step in something?”

  “It’s a potion in my purse.” Sadie yawned and stretched. “Forget about that, last we talked you were going to tell me about your great idea. Tell me about it while I fix myself a sandwich. I’m starved.”

  Dean followed Sadie into the kitchen. “First, let’s review what we know. My ex-wife, Jane, was shot to death, by someone who used my gun to kill her while she was getting a massage at Jonelle’s Day Spa downtown.”

  “Right.” Sadie took out a loaf of bread and jars of peanut butter and jelly. “And employees of the spa saw you there having an angry conversation with Jane. Don’t leave out that part. Every reporter in Seattle interviewed spa employees about your argument and those workers were quite convincing. What were you doing confronting your ex at a spa anyway?”

  “I followed her there.”

  “That doesn’t exactly make you look innocent.”

  “We were supposed to meet for coffee that morning but she ditched me with some excuse and then wouldn’t answer my calls,” Dean explained. “I decided to drive straight to her place and meet her in person. When I got a couple blocks from her place she blew past me going the other way. I followed her.”

  “So you followed her inside a spa and yelled at her in a confrontational manner just because she canceled a coffee date?”

  Sadie cut her sandwich into quarters and then got a glass of milk and brought both to the table.

  “She’d been canceling out on me for months. We needed to renegotiate the amount of spousal support I was paying her and we were trying to do it without involving the frickin’ lawyers because they’d gouge us both.”

  “Sounds like you wanted to stop paying support and she didn’t want to let you off the hook,” Sadie said around a mouthful of her gooey sandwich.

  “The support was supposed to be only until she got on her feet. She made more than me last year!” he shouted. “She’d already agreed about the money but then she kept cashing the damn postdated checks I’d given her last year.”

  “Why didn’t you just put a stop payment on the checks at your bank?” Sadie asked reasonably.

  “Because it looks bad in the courts if you put a stop on alimony payments,” Dean explained. “We were meeting so she could turn over the last three checks. That was it. No biggie. But when she took off to the spa, getting her massage on my dime . . .” He clenched and unclenched his fists. “Well, I admit I was pissed.”

  “So mad that you blew her brains out on the massage table?” Sadie asked.
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  “No!” Dean said, aggravated. “That’s the thing. I didn’t do that. After I told her off in the reception area, I left the place.”

  “The employees were quoted in the papers as saying they believed you snuck back inside while she was in the massage room, waited until her masseuse left the room to get more aromatic oils, and then walked in and shot her.”

  “I know that’s what they said.” He eyed Sadie seriously. “Do you really think I’d kill Jane for a few hundred bucks?”

  Sadie didn’t answer that question but she had one of her own. “What happened to my sandwich?”

  “You ate it.” It was Dean’s turn to roll his eyes. “You inhaled it, actually.”

  “Huh. Guess I was hungry.” She got up to make another one. “I still don’t know what I can do to help. They gotta have a dozen officers working the case.”

  “I think the people at the massage place know something they aren’t saying. I want you to go there and talk to the people and find out what you can. Maybe even get a massage with the same guy who did Jane’s.”

  Sadie tilted her head back and sighed.

  “A massage sounds great.” She smiled. Actually, it sounded divine. “But I can’t afford to be spending money wastefully. I’ve got to bank every penny for when I’m take time off work to be with my baby.”

  It was the first time she’d used the words “my baby,” and her voice choked up.

  “Jesus, are you going to cry?”

  “No!” Sadie stuffed more peanut butter and jelly sandwich into her mouth to keep from sobbing. After she’d washed down her second sandwich with milk and felt like her emotions were somewhat in check, she started talking again.

  “Look, I want your permission to talk to Zack about this. He’d know the best way to approach this and—”

  “No. Absolutely not.” Petrovich shook his head violently. “He used to be a cop and if he knew I was holed up with you, he’d feel obligated to turn us both in.”