by Sofia Belle
“Who found her?” Layla interrupted.
I pointed a finger at myself. “Moi.”
“Oh, my gosh!” Layla fanned herself. “Was there a lot of blood? Was it terrible? If you need a shrink, I know a good one.”
“I am not going to your shrink,” I said. “He’s a fraud, and he just likes to hit on you.”
Layla shrugged. “I was just offering. He’s a nice guy. Gives me a lot of business at the store. He sends people having intimacy issues on over, and I hook them up with some of the hottest products on the market.”
“You don’t have to pitch me on it,” I said. “I know the magic you work with your store. To answer your question, no. There was no blood, nothing. No immediate signs of foul play. People were even speculating it was a heart attack.”
“It wasn’t a heart attack.” Rosie leaned forward. “I know it wasn’t.”
“Here’s the secret. The thing you can’t print.” I pointed a finger at my friend. “The chief called me after and told me to be careful. Said there were signs of foul play.”
“Foreplay?” Layla asked. “That doesn’t sound all that bad.”
“Foul,” I repeated. “Foul play. As in, he thinks she might have been poisoned.”
Rosie’s eyes lit up even though she tried to hide it. “I knew it.”
“We can’t jump to conclusions,” I said. “Maybe she tried one of the tea elixirs from Carrie’s Cauldron that has weird side effects. I’ve heard rumors about some weird aftereffects happening with some of her latest potions. Especially if mixed with certain medicines.”
Rosie squinted. “Maybe. But maybe not.”
“Agreed,” I said, looking at my watch. “Good. Twenty minutes to spare. That’s all the information I have. The police are keeping cruisers around the hotel where the bridal party is staying, and I personally escorted Clive and Hailey home tonight.”
“But wait a second...how fast does the poison work?” Layla bit one of her red-lined lips. “Because that woman walked into the seamstress shop in one piece, I’m guessing. And if she wasn’t showing signs of sickness before, do you think it happened inside of Mrs. Doodles’s shop?”
“I don’t know, but if it did…” Rosie stood up. “That means someone in the bridal party might be involved.”
I swallowed. “There’s no way to tell unless we get more information.”
“What if we poked around a bit?” Rosie asked. “Swung by the hotel?”
I shook my head. “Not a good idea to get involved.”
“I’m in,” Layla said. “I love me some excitement in my life. Maybe I should get dressed up in my Bond Girl outfit. I’ve got these awesome leather pants. They don’t even have fabric over the rear end. Cool, huh?”
I gave her the strangest look I could muster. “No. That sounds…”
“Cold,” Rosie said. “That sounds very cold. Wouldn’t your butt get chilly just hanging around out there?”
“That’s a good point,” Layla said. “Maybe I should wear my trench coat instead. I don’t even need to wear anything underneath.”
“Yes, you do,” I said.
“Does that mean we’re going?” Rosie asked. “Are we going to go ask around the hotel? It can’t hurt. It’s your job, in fact. You should really be ensuring the safety of your bridal party.”
“That’s not my job,” I said. “I just plan the wedding and tell people where they need to go.”
“Well, if one of them is involved in something dangerous,” Rosie said, “your name is attached. Do you really want to ruin your perfect match rate?”
I hesitated. I really didn’t. But I also wasn’t a spy, I wasn’t an investigator, and I wasn’t sneaky. Despite Madrina accusing me of being a troublemaker, I generally liked to follow the rules. However, it couldn’t hurt to pay a visit, could it?
I’d stopped by to visit brides, grooms, bachelorette parties—you name it—in order to make sure things were going okay. I’d held hands, soothed “cold feet” syndrome, and gotten tipsy bridesmaids home in one piece. This wasn’t really all that different. So I nodded. “Fine. But we’re just stopping by, saying hello, and getting out. Understood?”
Layla and Rosie looked at one another and grinned. “Understood.”
Chapter 5
** **
“There. You girls are as ready as I've ever seen.” Layla stepped back and grinned. She gave a firm nod. “You guys should really think about letting me dress you more often. I do have a twenty-percent discount for friends and family at the Witch's Britches, you know.”
“What are we, friends and family?” Rosie asked, surveying both of our outfits. “Can we get a double discount?”
“I would never work again if I wore something like this to the office.” I looked down at my Angelina-Jolie-in-Tomb-Raider getup. Black pants that squeezed my legs, a zip-up—also black—with pointed studs around the collar and lacy gloves that ran from the tips of my fingers up past my elbows. “Where did you get all this stuff?”
“Well, the gloves are from the store; exquisite, aren't they?” Layla grabbed my hand, caressing my fingers as if she were about to propose.
I yanked my hand back. “I wasn't going to say exquisite, but I suppose that's a nicer way to put it.”
“Seriously, do people wear these things around?” Rosie hadn't fared much better.
She wore striped black tights underneath a pair of black shorts. She, too, had a dark sweatshirt and gloves on, though her gloves were leather and made her look like a motorcycle mama. She'd pulled the hood up and over her hair, and except for the glisten of her eyes behind the shadow, her features were indecipherable. “I can't move. And these shoes—Layla, these shoes are not going to work.”
Layla had spared me difficult shoes, probably because I was already tall enough without additional lift. So while she'd let me get away with black sneakers, she'd shoved poor Rosie into platform black shoes that looked heavier than a small child.
“This is like walking around halfway glued to cement,” she said. “How can I escape?”
“I'll tell you what. Keep the gloves, and you can ditch the shoes.” Layla reached out and yanked up the gloves Rosie had pulled halfway off her hands. “I have an extra pair of kicks in the back of my car that should work for you. Let's go.”
“What about you?” I asked. “Why do you get to wear normal clothes?”
“Because my ‘normal’ clothes are badass.” Layla gestured to her getup, which, now that I looked closer, was almost a mirror image of what she'd shoved on me and Rosie. Except it didn't look alarming on her because we were all used to seeing her like that. “See? I got these nice black jeans with just the right amount of holes, and this shirt. Isn't this shirt to die for? It's new.”
I squinted at the shirt, which was more like a piece of floss tied around Layla's body in a very fancy fashion. Thick floss, thankfully. She’d covered up all the essentials, but the amount of skin peeking out was enough to make any head turn.
Good thing this town knew Layla, and something about her unapologetic love for all things risqué somehow made her dress code okay. If I wore that shirt, I'd be thrown in jail for indecent exposure. But if Layla wore it to the grocery store, half the town would compliment her figure and ask if she'd been working out.
“I don't get it,” I said. “You can rock a shirt like that, and I look like...like the discarded member of a boy band from the nineties.”
“And I look like...” Rosie looked down. “Well, I look sort of like a criminal, but I feel a little badass, I'm not gonna lie.”
“See?” Layla clapped her hands, which were covered in dainty gloves with crisscrossing strings up her arms. “That's what I live for! I can bring out the vixen in anyone. Do you feel vixen-esque, Bel?”
“I feel something, that's for sure,” I said. “But I think the word you are looking for is ‘claustrophobic.’”
“Oh, boo hoo, I've made you step out of your comfort zone.” Layla reached for her keys on the tabl
e and waved for us to follow her. “It’s good for you. You have to look for love if you ever want to get married, you know.”
“I'm perfectly happy unmarried,” I said. “I don’t think it’s in the cards for me.”
“Not with that attitude.”
Layla locked the front door, and the three of us—looking, feeling, and talking like Charlie's Angels—slunk down the front path toward the next street, where the cars were parked.
“I agree with Layla. Bel, you've gotta loosen up a little bit. Step out of your comfort zone.”
“I am loose.” I straightened my shoulders and wiggled. “Look at me.”
I took a few steps up to the cars, flaunting my new outfit. There was only one problem: the clothes were so stiff that my motions came off robotic and stilted, and my feet clunked down like a motorized wind-up toy plodding along.
“Right.” Layla rolled her eyes. “You can't keep blaming it on the curse.”
“But the curse—” I started.
“—is real,” Rosie finished. “I know, but I just think there has to be a way around it.”
“I agree. Maybe the curse is real,” Layla said. “But that doesn't mean you should give up. Figure out how to break it.”
I raised my keys and beeped open the door to my nondescript, functional vehicle. “How do you suggest I break a long-standing curse like this one?”
“Oh, no.” Layla shook her head at my choice of car. “Nope. We are not taking your boring-mobile. Tonight, this cover operation requires something with a little more spice. We're taking the Bat-Beetle.”
“The Bat-Beetle is about the least conspicuous car on the face of the earth,” I said, glancing a few feet up the street. There, parked illegally in front of a fire hydrant, sat a VW Beetle. But not just any VW Beetle. Layla's VW Beetle. “I thought we were going for stealthy.”
“Our clothes are going for stealthy,” she said. “Our car is going for ooomph.”
The thought crossed my mind that I should protest a bit more, but I didn't want to waste any more time. So I took a few steps toward the Bat-Beetle, gritted my teeth, and climbed inside.
The Bat-Beetle was less of a car and more of an entity all in itself. The base layer of paint was a dark, inky black, but that was just for starters. Orange, red, and yellow flames violently licked up the sides, while a set of ginormous plastic eyelashes sat atop the headlights.
The rose in the front of the Beetle was a poisonous jet black, while the steering wheel was coated in a flaming yellow cover. Layla had even installed some aftermarket blue lights to the bottom of her vehicle that made the flames up the side come to life when she got going at a good clip. However, seeing as the lights were illegal everywhere in the country, she'd really only turned them on a handful of times.
“Can I turn on the blues?” she asked. “I never get to use the lights underneath.”
“No. They're illegal,” I said. “We can't get pulled over if we want to check on the bridal party. We have to be calm and collected. I don’t even know why we dressed up like this, anyway. We’re not doing anything dangerous.”
“Who knows?” Rosie said, an ominous tone to her voice. “Maybe it’ll turn dangerous. Plus, we’re sort of spying and watching out for bad guys. So we should stay away from the cops.”
I glanced at Rosie. “Are you sure you don’t have another reason for staying away from the cops? I can’t figure out if you and the chief were flirting or fighting today.”
“I'm telling you, those two kids are going to be showing up at your office before you know it,” Layla said, cranking the car into high gear and pulling away from the curb. “Flirting and fighting are a fine line, and Rosie and the chief walk it like a tightrope.”
Rose made a face, then stared out the window for the rest of the drive. A drive that only took about two minutes at the rate Layla was disobeying any signs of the speed limit.
Upon my urging, she parked a block away from the hotel, and the three of us sat still for a long minute, surveying the area, before climbing out.
“I feel really dumb.” Rosie looked down. “I thought this looked badass in the privacy of Bel's bedroom, but now I just feel dumb.”
I glanced down at my own getup, mimicking Rosie's nod. Tourists and locals alike strolled through town, the tourists oblivious to the strangeness of the day, while the locals walked in small clusters, whispering and pointing and nodding and generally discussing the potential murder investigation. Among the floral summer dresses, the yellows and pinks and polka-dotted patterns, we stuck out like sore thumbs in our all-black getups.
“Let's get off the streets,” I said. “Into the hotel.”
“We're not doing anything wrong.” Layla stretched, flaunting her figure. “We are allowed to walk around here just like the rest of these people.”
“True, but we look suspicious,” I said. “On a day like today, people are looking for suspicious.”
As if to prove my point, a group of three teenage girls looked up as they walked down the street, each of them holding an ice cream cone. When they caught sight of us, they immediately averted their eyes and crossed to the sidewalk on the other side of the road.
“See?” Rosie gestured. “The tweens are afraid of us. Tweens aren't afraid of anything. They think they're invincible.”
“Who says they're afraid of us? Maybe they just decided the other side of the road looked nicer,” Layla said.
“Or maybe your lack of a shirt is scaring them away.” I nodded toward her stringy top. “Didn't you bring a cardigan or something?”
“The day I start dressing like you, I give you permission to shoot me,” Layla said. “I like spice. Nothing wrong with that.”
By now, we were at the front of the hotel and couldn't delay going inside any longer. This hotel was tall, too tall for our town. It rose twelve floors from the ground, a rare sight since most of the buildings around here topped out at two floors plus an attic.
However, during high tourism season, the hotel did good business, keeping most of its rooms hopping. Add in the fact that the hotel had gone all out on the magic theme and decorated the place like a castle, and it was a large attraction.
Plus, it wasn’t just a hotel. A huge pool complete with a mini waterpark sat adjacent to the main building, and restaurants, arcades, and even a bowling alley took up some of the game floors inside. The hotel was a one stop shop for families on vacation. As a bonus, it worked great as a distraction to keep kids busy during wedding events.
I put my hand on the door, looked up at the girls, and raised my eyebrows. “Ready?”
Rosie nodded.
Layla didn’t bother to nod, barging straight through the door.
Rosie shrugged. “Whatever, works for me.”
“I'm just going to follow her,” I said. “I think she knows what she's doing.”
Layla was already at the front desk by the time I caught up to her, so I dropped back and waited behind a potted plant to give her room to work. The potted plant didn't hide anything except one of my pinky fingers, but I could pretend.
Rosie spotted me and joined me, though since I barely fit behind the tree, we had no chance of squeezing together behind the flimsy branches.
“What is she doing up there?” I hissed.
“Getting us in trouble?” Rosie gave me a conflicted look. “I have no idea.”
We didn't have to wait long. Layla rounded the corner a few seconds later, her arms crossed in dismay, an attitude in her step. “Can you believe they don't give out client information here? What is this, a Swiss bank?”
“It's a hotel,” I said. “There are things like privacy laws. Not everyone is as ‘out there’ and ‘free’ as you are.”
“Yeah, I'm a baller,” Layla said.
“Don't say that,” Rosie said. “Let me handle the talking. Speaking of, I'll be right back.”
“What's wrong with it?” Layla turned to me as Rosie disappeared and approached the front desk for attempt number two. “Fre
edom of speech, freedom of clothes. I'm all about freedom.”
“Yes, we know.” I reached out and adjusted Layla's straps. “We love you for it, dear. Usually.”
“I just don’t understand why they wouldn’t give me a name. I asked nicely.”
“Well, if I was staying at the hotel, frankly I wouldn't want a stranger to waltz right into my room.” I wrinkled my nose.
Before Layla could begin Part II of her argument, Rosie returned with a wink and the flash of a room card.
“How did you do that?” I whispered, sliding out from behind the potted plant and following her toward the elevator. Layla followed us too, but far more conspicuously. She tended to strut her stuff when she walked, which generally ended up with a lot of heads turning in her direction, for good and for bad.
“I have my ways,” Rosie said, using the key card to punch us up to floor number twelve. “How else would I run a successful gossip blog if I didn't know how to get information that people wanted kept secret?”
“You scare me,” I said, shaking my head. I reached out of the elevator doors before they shut, yanking Layla inside as she attempted to make winky eyes at a handsome man standing at the bar. “I'm glad you're on my side.”
“Let's keep it that way.”
“Seriously, you didn't threaten anyone to get that key, did you?” I crossed my fingers, not wanting to get in trouble. I wanted to check on the bridal party and get out.
Rosie blew out a sigh. “I wish. Really, it was simple. I gave her a fake name and made her try to look me up in the system. The name I gave her sounded a whole lot like Linda's last name and shared many of the same first letters. Both names popped up into the results listings. The room number was attached to Linda’s name.”
“You are good.” I peeked at the card. “Room 1208?”
Rosie gave a smug grin. “When she couldn't find my fake name, I asked her to book me in Room 1210 for the night since she’d ‘lost’ my listing.”
“How does the room next to Linda's help us?” I asked. “Aren't we looking for the room where the bridesmaids are likely to be? I highly doubt that's Linda's room.”
