“If she has one, likely it was that she was off soused somewhere,” Win said with a sarcastically dry tone.
“Maybe someone showed up and caught her off guard? Or maybe she heard someone and it scared her off and she didn’t have time to hide it?” Bel suggested.
I frowned as I stared at the picture, at the pattern of blood clinging to Doug’s face. “Maybe. So let’s say it was Tammy, or any of them, for that matter. If someone showed up and caught her in the act, they wouldn’t have just left him there. I’d like to think they would have called the police. Besides, the dried blood suggests he was there a while before we came across him. If someone scared her off and didn’t call the police, wouldn’t she go back for the murder weapon?”
“Unless it was collaboration. You remember that time in the Balkan Peninsula, Zero?” Arkady asked.
Win nodded at the memory, his eyes faraway. “Do you mean when the brothers all killed the prince due to marry their sister? What a bloody mess that was to sort out.”
I scratched my head. “All of them? I don’t get it.”
Arkady explained. “There were four brothers. They all put hand on gun that kill prince so no one brother could be blamed.”
Dang. Spying was a crazy line of business, huh?
“So you think Linda, Leslie, and Tammy all jammed a cake server into Doug’s head? If you’d seen these women, Arkady, even as angry as the one named Leslie is, I don’t know that they’d be collectively coordinated enough to kill Doug together without breaking into a brawl. All they do is fight. In fact, if I had friends like that, I’d become a hermit. They’re terrible to each other.”
“As misogynistic as this will sound, chap, I never want to encounter another gaggle of clucking hens like those women. Not only were they rude to each other, they were crass with Stephania. It was unseemly.”
Arkady’s hearty laugh boomed in my ears. “Ah, Zero. Being amongst the living isn’t all it is cracked up to be, eh?”
I tapped the screen of my laptop to redirect. “Okay, let’s forget about what jerks they were and focus on the task at hand. For instance, the blood on his head is dry. So it looks like he was there a while before we discovered him.” I nudged Win. “Do you think your bro-friend will give us a time of death? I’m not sure that it’ll change much about the crime, but it never hurts to have every last detail. And at least we have a reference point so we can check on where everyone was when Doug was killed.”
Win dragged an affectionate finger down my cheek and bopped the tip of my nose before he smiled indulgently the way he does when he’s going to burst my bubble.
“Ah, Stephania. Green isn’t your color. I don’t know if my bro-friend will provide an answer due to procedure and all. But I can surely ask.”
“But why leave the murder weapon behind?” Bel asked. “That’d leave fingerprints on the handle, wouldn’t it? DNA? Evidence of some kind?”
I stared harder at the picture of Doug. “Or they wiped the handle clean. Who wants to dig a cake server out of someone’s head?”
“Not a pleasant task,” Win assured us.
I leaned my chin on the heel of my hand. “I don’t even want to know how you know that.” Next, I clicked on the picture of the charm and blew it up. “Moving right along—” I stopped short with a hard gulp.
“I cannot see what tiny trinket say, my butter cookie.”
Dana had arrived almost the moment I’d found it, so I never got a good look myself.
But I didn’t like what I was looking at, and I’m sure Win didn’t either.
“What does it say, malutka?”
I sighed with deep regret. “It says Nana.”
Well, that sure wasn’t good.
Chapter 8
“Maybe it didn’t come from Cleo’s bracelet. I bet loads of people have charm bracelets and a charm that says ‘Nana.’ Who doesn’t love their nana enough to have a charm on their bracelet that says they love their grandmother?”
Win stopped me on the sidewalk in front of Madam Z’s, where we’d returned for our afternoon reading. “Dove, you do know that’s wishful thinking, yes? You’re trying to make me feel better because I’ve taken a shine to her. Of course it’s Cleo’s. Yet, it might have nothing to do with the murder. Perhaps she doesn’t either, but you do realize my bro-friend and his compadres are going to look at her first, don’t you? She’s the spouse of a man who was just murdered.”
Cleo’s sweet face with the sprinkling of freckles across her nose flashed through my mind’s eye, making me shake my head. “Yeah-yeah. I know she’s the likely suspect. The spouse always is, but I don’t believe she’s capable of murder. My gut disagrees with that assessment. Now Leslie? Wouldn’t put it past her, which makes her too obvious again, doesn’t it? Angry, broody woman, protective of Cleo in an antagonistic, weird way, kills her almost-ex because he’s caused her friend so much grief.”
Win shrugged and unlocked the door to the shop. “While I wouldn’t put murder past Leslie—she certainly is a raging bull—nothing is off the table at this point. It’s all too new to make any concrete decisions.”
Frowning, I looked up at the sky filled with clouds like mashed potatoes and sighed. “What’s bugging me is, Linda said if Cleo knew Doug was here in Eb Falls, she didn’t tell her friends. She must have seen him at the motel, if a charm from her bracelet was at the crime scene, right? I’m pretty sure she’s not capable of hiding her emotions so well she’d be able to hide the fact that he was dead. Which means she had to have at least seen him before she met up with the ladies today for the reading, and she probably saw him alive. Because the blood on his head was dry. If she saw him last night, and she didn’t tell her friends—it looks bad. We need to figure out where everyone was at the time of death and then we need alibis.”
Win cocked his head. “I’d have to agree that she may have seen him before he was killed. Last night, for instance—before the hen party—or maybe even after. As warm as it was, Doug could have been killed in the wee hours of the morning with plenty of time for the blood on his head to dry.”
“Hen party?”
Win flapped a lean hand at me. “You Americans call it a bachelorette party. We Brits call it a hen. Either way, I don’t believe she knew Doug was dead. Maybe Cleo did see him before he died, and she didn’t tell them merely because her friends disliked him so. It certainly isn’t worth the hassle to have to explain he was here while they harp on her. If you had Leslie for a friend, would you tell her your soon-to-be-ex-husband was on the premises? That heathen would wreak havoc.”
“Point for you. Leslie is unruly and they’d probably lecture her about divorcing him for the umpteenth time if Cleo even breathed his name. I guess I wouldn’t tell them he was here if I knew, either.”
Then Win threw out another theory that made sense. “Or maybe Cleo was simply admiring the pond the way we were and never even knew he was here? Maybe the charm fell off of its own accord and has nothing to do with Doug’s death. But I surely don’t believe, after her agonizing sobs today, that she’s capable of faking the reaction she had when she saw Doug. I believe that was the first time she laid eyes on him.”
I waved to Winston Pearl when he passed us on the sidewalk, the smile on his face warm as he tottered along, likely to have his afternoon danish as more questions whirred in my brain. “And what about Cleo’s twin showing up at the reading? Do you think she was trying to warn her about Doug?”
Win clucked his tongue with a scowl. “Quite frankly, Stephania, I don’t know what she was trying to do. Not a word of it made any sense. Not a lick. I did a bit more reading on cryptophasia, not that it helped me much. It may be something we’ll never understand unless we can have Cleo with us and, right now, I fear she likely doesn’t want to talk to her dead sister when her husband’s just been murdered.”
This poor woman. She’d been through an awful lot and she wasn’t even thirty. “I’d sure like to talk to her if her sister Carys reappears. Maybe you can repeat wh
atever she says and Cleo will know what it means.”
“Indeed. That’s always a possibility, and I’d be happy to do so if it would bring Cleo some peace. For now, shall we focus on Judd Milkovitch and his dearly departed Auntie Priss?”
I gave him a quick kiss on the cheek before turning back to the shop. “You’re right. I should focus on our next client and not Cleo and company. At least not in this moment.”
The second we stepped deeper into the shop, the scent of lavender and sage greeting me, I knew something was off. I felt it to my bones.
Someone had been here.
Win took a sharp inhale of breath. “What in all of blazes?”
The moment the scene before me registered, my shoulders sagged to my toes and my heart went with it. It looked like someone had broken in.
As the mess of the store registered, as the scattered candles, broken bags of healing herbs and the rack of postcards all in a clump on the floor sank in deeper, I grew angry and suspicious.
Sifting through the rubble, my face went hot. “I know I set the alarm before we left for the motel, Win. I know I did. You don’t think Leslie would have exacted some revenge?”
“Oh, I don’t doubt you set the alarm, Dove, but even as horrid as she is, I don’t think we can blame this on Leslie. Look,” he said, pointing to the far wall with a lean finger.
I blinked to be sure I was seeing what my eyes were telling me I was seeing.
In some sort of substance, right next to the wall of windchimes local artist Missy Harbow crafted, someone had written, Not his. Mine.
Win wandered over to the wall and ran his finger over the word mine, rubbing his fingers together. “It’s chalk. I’d say from the sandwich board we put outside during business hours. I don’t think someone broke in, Stephania. I think we’ve had a visitor from the other side.”
And that’s why I had that strange feeling when we’d walked inside the shop.
I looked up at the ceiling with narrowed eyes and shook my finger. “You know, guys, you don’t have to be a bunch of dorkfaces when you want to make a point or get my attention. You could always just do something crazy like appear and tell us the problem instead of whipping through here like little cyclones. I’m telling you, if I ever get the chance to meet you passel of troublemakers, I’m going to give you the business. Now, what’s this about?”
I stood, all but tapping my toe, waiting for an answer, but was greeted with complete silence.
As Win began picking up candles and broken bags of herbs, I grabbed the broom and went along behind him, sweeping up the mess.
“So who do we think this message is from and what does it mean, Dove?”
I pushed up the sleeves of my light sweater and kept sweeping. “Arkady? You there?”
“Dah, malutka. What is it you need?”
I pictured his rugged face in my mind and smiled, despite the mess on the floor. “Any rumblings about what happened here today and what the message on the wall written in chalk could be about?”
“Nyet, beautiful lady. Not one word about the little girl, either. All is quiet here on Plane Limbo.”
“Of course it is,” I mumbled with a groan. “Why would it be that easy?”
Win chuckled as he rolled up his sleeves. “What fun would that be, Dove? Surely you’d miss the tug of war only a good mystery can provide?”
Leaning against the broom, I sighed. “It would be cleaner, that’s for sure.” I paused for a moment, thinking about the message on the wall. “Do you think the message was from Cleo’s sister?”
“I thought you said picking up physical things was a task hard-learned? I do recall you mentioning that to me when I once wrote a message to that halfwit car dealer who was cheating on his wife early on in my ghost-ship.”
Gosh, that felt like a lifetime and three or four cars ago. As you know, I have trouble keeping a car for very long before it meets a painful demise.
I pulled my phone from my purse and took a picture of the message in chalk. “But the point is, you did it, even if you were a whole different breed of ghost. For all I know the rules upstairs have changed. Maybe they’re learning quicker. I don’t know. I do know Carys has been gone quite some time. Since she was twelve when she died, if I remember what Cleo said correctly. And it’s not as though we can compare what she said to you to the message, because you couldn’t understand her without interpretation.”
“Maybe it from bad almost-ex-husband?” Arkady suggested.
Pausing my sweeping, I gave that thought. “That’s a distinct possibility. Have you heard about any new Plane Limbo inductees who are total buttwipes and troubled about whether they should crossover?”
“Nyet, my petal. No buttwipes today, but that does not mean the bad ex doesn’t exist here. I will keep eyes open as always.”
Win handed me a broken candle to set on the counter. “That still doesn’t explain how the store got in this condition.”
Well, it sort of did. “Sometimes there’s a lot of anger involved in trying to break through to the other side. Whoever wrote the message—which isn’t exactly a love song, mind you—was probably pretty upset. So sure, it could have been Doug. Who isn’t angry when their life is cut short by way of a cake server to the brain?”
Win took a glance at his wristwatch and reminded me we’d better get a move on. “Judd will be here shortly, Stephania. You need to change into your Madam Zoltar gadgetry. Let me finish cleanup and we’ll talk about the rest of this later.”
Handing him the broom, I stood on tiptoe to give him a kiss. “I like you today, International Man of Mystery. First you offer me ice cream for lunch and then you offer to clean up. I’m not mad at this turn of events.”
Win scooped me into a tight hold, making my back arch, and dropped a kiss on my lips. “I suppose I like you, too. But surely not as much as I love you. Now off with you, Temptress,” he teased. “We have a charlatan’s work to do.”
I giggled like a besotted schoolgirl as I made my way to the back room to find my turban and my Madam Zoltar muumuu, my heart skipping beats the way it always did when Win kissed me, even as I tried not to think about how I was going to get around Dana to question poor Cleo.
“Aunt Priss? Your beloved nephew Judd’s here and he’d like to talk to you. Won’t you join us?” I asked as I fingered the cameo broach Judd had brought with him.
More silence.
Man, we’d been having a day of it with the afterlife. Either the wrong ghosts were showing up or the really angry ones. If this was a sign of things to come for the tourist season, we were toast.
I’m sure I’ve mentioned, all our fees are donated to one charity or another, and this month’s fees were going to the local no-kill animal shelter. It was an important place to us.
We both volunteered there as often as time allowed, and sometimes at night, Bel would sneak in through a heating vent and read stories to the animals or sing to soothe them and ease their anxiety. We attended as many adoption drives as we could and we sent monthly food supplies.
But the way these last two readings had gone, we’d be donating couch change.
Judd sat across from me, his youthful face fraught with concern. The skin at his slender neck, surrounded by a neatly pressed, checkered blue shirt, turned red.
“Aunt Priss? It’s me, Judd. Can you hear me?” he muttered in clear discomfort.
His voice wobbled enough to make my heart clench. Judd had been raised by his aunt Priscilla after his mother died when he was only a baby.
His aunt had given him a home in her sister’s stead and raised Judd as her own. They’d shared a close relationship, but he’d been away on a backpacking trip in Asia when she passed, and he hadn’t been able to say goodbye.
He didn’t want anything from her, not money or possessions. All he wanted to know was if she was happy and safe, and to tell her how much he appreciated what she’d done for him.
But Aunt Priss didn’t want to come out and play today, and I felt awful
. Almost everyone who wants to make contact with a loved on the other side needs something from said loved one. Everything from hidden money to a lost item of some kind or another.
All Judd wanted was to tell his aunt he loved her one more time.
My eyes met Win’s over the candle in the middle of the table and my heart sank.
“Aunt Priss?” Judd squeaked, running his finger around the collar of his button-up shirt. “All I want to know is that you’re happy. I have to believe you went somewhere great because you were the best gift my mother could have given me when she left me to you. I love you, Aunt Priss, and I miss you like crazy. I’m sorry I wasn’t there when…when you left…”
I closed my eyes and sent out a prayer to the universe that Aunt Priss would show up, if for nothing else than to ease Judd’s guilt—guilt that rolled off him in waves.
But still, a big fat nothing.
The candle flickered, the beads connecting the storefront to the reading room sat unmoving.
Judd’s lean face went red, and the sadness in his voice twisted my heart into a knot. “Maybe…maybe she just doesn’t want to talk to me. Maybe she’s upset that I wasn’t there when she needed me most?”
The soft hesitance in his deep voice was killing me. I reached for his hand and squeezed it with a sympathetic smile. “Or maybe she’s happily on the other side, doing well and safe in her afterlife. I don’t believe your aunt, especially after all the wonderful things you said about her, is upset with you, Judd.”
The second the words were out of my mouth was the second the table lifted off the floor, so high it touched the ceiling, then came crashing down to the ground with a loud splinter of wood and the rattle of glass from the candleholder.
Judd’s fear upset me. He’d come for a peaceful reading and instead he was getting a reenactment of World War II.
Where There's A Witch, There's A Way (Witchless In Seattle Mysteries Book 13) Page 7
