Inconvenient Murder: An Inept Witches Mystery

by Amanda A. Allen

  “I’ll kill him. When I get my hands on him, he’s a dead man. And you—young lady—you are grounded for the rest of time. Or at least your natural life. Do you know what this information could do to the custody battle if your grandparent’s find out?”

  “But I love him, dad.”

  “Sex is not the same thing as love, Mary. You couldn’t possibly know what love is. I don’t even know if I know.”

  Emily listened to Doug, the creeptastic guy who ran the gallery that took up one section of the retail space on the bottom floor of their building. He was constantly yelling at his daughter. He was going to have to go. His vibe screwed with Emily’s mojo. She strained to hear Mary’s quieter voice. “Whatever. You aren’t even my real dad. I don’t have to listen to you. No wonder Mom left you. All you care about is your stupid art.”

  Gallery guy’s voice was thin and cold. “I’m not the only one your mom left. Now, get inside, young lady. Right now. You aren’t seeing him again. Do you want a court to force you to live in Seattle with your grandparents? I didn’t think so. Now, get inside.”

  Mary grumbled, but followed him inside.

  Emily sighed in annoyance and closed her window. If Ingrid were home tonight, Emily would have called the cops so the sheriff Ingrid was crushing on could come over. But she wasn’t. And Emily wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone.

  She swallowed two Advil and then changed into her pajamas. She wrapped up in her super soft robe and lay on the couch to watch TV until Ingrid got back on the late ferry. She would need help unloading whatever nonsense she’d bought while in Seattle to make herself feel better after dealing with Harrison’s brats.

  She called Ingrid to see if she made the last ferry out of Seattle but got her voice mail.

  “Ingrid, did you make the ferry or get caught up shopping and have to stay the night? Call me when you get here, and I’ll help you unload your stress purchases. Hope you got me something good, like new chopsticks. I’m gonna use my good set to murder Owen. See you in a few. Oh, hey, bring me a pack of Mentos from the store on the ferry. Fruity goodness is just what I need to get the sour taste of dickhead out of my mouth. I’ll probably fall asleep on the couch, but I’ll leave the ringer on. Also, if the ferry sinks, be sure to put on your life jacket. Not that it matters. You’d probably still end up as a whale appetizer, but whatever. ‘Night.”

  She tucked her phone in her robe pocket and laid her head back on the sofa. Emily drifted off in a wine-induced haze with crazy images of Owen drowning in a sea of Chinese noodles. Her lip curled in a satisfactory smile, and she fell asleep.

  •

  Wednesday Night

  Ingrid drove the Escalade onto the ferry. The boat was loaded to the rails, but she needed a coffee, and she needed it right that second. She hopped out, weaving through the cars and almost racing to the top of the ferry to get a coffee before the line was insanely long. She was only two people from the cashier when she glanced around and saw Sheriff Hotpants.

  “Oh,” she said. She grinned at him and waved. He nodded. It was a friendly nod, and she decided it was time to seek him out. She ordered two coffees and two brownies and wove through the crowd to sit next to him by the windows. “Hello again. I’m Ingrid, if you don’t remember.”

  She handed him the coffee, and her fingers touched his, and she felt as giddy as a tween talking to her big crush.

  “Hello,” he said. “I remember. Enchanted Tales right? Danna’s old shop?”

  “Yup,” she said. She stared at him for a long moment before sipping her coffee. He was just so attractive she wasn’t sure she could compete. She wasn’t ugly. She had nice skin, straight teeth, a long swathe of dark hair and a pretty good body. But he was…just perfect. “So, I’ve decided I want you for my own.”

  He choked and began coughing. She walloped him on his back and then added, “I just figured it’s better to not play games.”

  “So you’re just going to say it like that,” he wheezed. But his eyes sparked at her, and she saw the way he examined her legs and glanced at her chest.

  She grinned and nodded. “I’m not easy. You’re going to have to date me for a while first. I’m going to need both food and dancing before anything else is on the table.”

  “Uh.” He shifted a bit, wordless.

  She grinned at him, smacked his arm as casually as an old friend and said, “It’s okay. I only seem crazy. I’m mostly, well, not normal, but I’m mostly harmless. Hey look, whales.”

  He turned his head, and they watched the massive bodies move through the water in the lights cast by the ferry.

  “Whales,” she said, changing the subject, “will absolutely eat your face and your dog.”

  “I don’t have a dog.”

  “I’m more of a cat person myself.”

  “You’re a witch right? Part of the Sage Island Coven.”

  “Technically speaking,” Ingrid agreed, crossing her legs and leaning back. It was cold, and she snuggled right into him. He froze for a moment but relaxed as all she did was steal a bit of his warmth.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Honestly,” Ingrid looked up at him through her lashes and said, “Emily and I might be the worst, most terrible, completely inept witches this island has ever seen.”

  “So you can’t do magic?”

  “Oh, we can do it,” Ingrid countered. “Or maybe it can do us. It never goes quite as planned.”

  He sat up suddenly and looked down at her. “Are you why my hat keeps flying off?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Ingrid nodded, laughing as she snuggled back into him. “You do have just the most amazing butt.”

  “So are you the reason my head is pounding?”

  “Um, no, of course not,” she said, nodding. She reached toward his head, right where he hit it against the bricks, and somehow—this time—she knew just what to do. She could almost feel his pain pulling into her fingertips as she rubbed his hair and then dissipating. “There,” she said, “all better.”

  •

  Thursday Morning, 2am

  When the ferry docked, Ingrid waited for Gabe to go to his car, but he stood and headed toward the pedestrian line.

  “No car?”

  He shook his head and said, “It’s in the downtown lot.”

  “I will absolutely give you a ride those three blocks and offer you some Chinese leftovers in exchange for manual labor.”

  “What kind of manual labor?” His eyes narrowed, but he followed her to her car and didn’t seem bothered. She grinned at him. Talking over random things on the ride and getting to know him had just made her want him all the more. He was in the breathing-in stage of drinking wine. She was letting him sit to savor him more later, and she looked forward to each step of the process.

  “Mostly lifting and carrying,” she said as they looked at the back of her loaded Escalade.

  “Did you buy a new car to be able to bring all of this back?”

  “Not exactly,” Ingrid said. “But the new car certainly allowed me to buy more.”

  When they arrived at the square, brick building, she pulled around back and parked in her space. The basement was storage, the main floor was shops, the second floor was divided into four apartments that were full. The third floor was all Emily’s. They’d turned the four apartments into one massive one for her. The top floor was Ingrid’s. And the roof was, or had been, a garden. Right then it currently had dead plants, a couple of lounge chairs, and a lot of seagull excrement.

  “So I just need it loaded into the elevator,” she said while heading for the double doors that were used only by the residents. It was open. She frowned at it and then glanced over at him. He was holding one of the espresso machines and waiting for her to swing the door back. “That’s weird.”

  “What?” He sounded so patient, she kinda wanted to scratch his ear for being a good boy.

  “Well,” she said, “these should be locked. They’re on auto-lock, so unless someone fiddled with that, we
should have to use our keys.”

  Gabe set down the espresso machine just as she pulled the door back.

  “Let’s just,” but he paused as her head cocked.

  She looked past him into the little foyer. This was the employee and resident entrance. To the right was the back of the bookstore and a hallway down to the other shops. To the left was a double-doored wrought iron gate that divided off the stairs and old-fashioned gated elevator for the residents. Both doors were standing open.

  Both should have been locked.

  “What is it?” He sounded worried now, just from her reaction, and she could almost see the awareness settle over him.

  “Oh.” She stepped farther into the hallways toward the bookshop. The entrance was standing open. “I’d say it’s probably Em. But it isn’t Em. I don’t know.”

  “What is it, Ingrid?”

  She glanced up at him. “The bookstore is unlocked. We never do that. There isn’t anything to steal, but Em and I both lived in Seattle so long, we don’t even think before locking doors behind ourselves or locking up as we leave. Half these stores might be unlocked, but ours never is. It’s why we have auto lock and the gates over there are closed. We’re a little paranoid.”

  “Just stay here and I’ll check it out.”

  Gabe went forward and Ingrid followed.

  “I asked you to stay.”

  “Yes,” Ingrid said, “but the shop is such a mess you won’t know if there’s a problem without me.”

  Gabe didn’t object after she hung back to give him room. The light above the bookstore was out.

  “Was it like this before?”

  She shook her head. She wasn’t that worried. Even if they’d been robbed, there wasn’t much of value in the store. Maybe some of the magic stuff in the basement could be valuable, but she and Em would never even know if they’d lost something of worth since they had no idea what most of it was.

  Gabe took a flashlight from the utility closet and shined it into the bookstore. “This place is disgusting,” he said.

  “I know,” Ingrid whispered. “We should probably just hire someone since Em and I aren’t going to ever get it pulled together.”

  She looked around the store with him. The stacks of books and debris and dirt and cobwebs all looked about right. Except…

  “The basement door isn’t usually like that,” she said. She wondered if she should feel scared, but mostly she just felt happy to be with Gabe.

  He opened the door to the basement and shined his light down the old stairs.

  “Is that a foot?” Ingrid gasped and grabbed his bicep. “It’s a foot. That’s a pant leg. Oh my goodness, oh my goodness, that’s a body.”

  “Stay here,” Gabe snapped, heading down the stairs.

  Ingrid looked around the bookstore and then shook her head. Whoever did this could be hidden anywhere within the bookstore. She was staying with Gabe or making a run for it. She followed him down the stairs, saw him glance at her, scowl, and then he crept down farther.

  “Oh, what a dickhead!”

  “Excuse me,” Gabe asked, but Ingrid brushed passed him and snapped on the downstairs lights. Dickhead, Emily’s husband, lay dead on the floor. A cup was beside him and there were herbs all over the place.

  “Dickhead, you dickhead,” Ingrid said, squatting down on the side of the body, noticing the vomit just in time to avoid it. She looked him over. “He died here, just like a dickhead. What a freaking headache!”

  “I take it you know who this is?”

  “It’s Emily’s husband. The dickhead. But he wasn’t supposed to be here until tomorrow. Oh my goodness, Emily!”

  Ingrid’s hand was shaking as she pulled her phone from her pocket. “He smells,” she told Gabe.

  “That’s pretty cold,” he said as he pulled out his own phone to call for an ambulance and the other policemen.

  “Well, considering that I’d have gladly shot him in the face, backed over him with my car or stabbed him in the kidneys, mostly I’m just completely unsurprised that in dying he managed to be as big of a dick dead as he was alive.”

  The phone picked up for them both, and she demanded, “Emily, are you all right?”

  “What? Yes. Are you okay? Where are you?”

  “In the basement. Em, dickhead is dead. He died in our shop. What a dick.”

  “What?” Emily’s voice was foggy and shocked.

  “Em!” Ingrid gasped, her voice shaking a bit as she said, “Owen, Em, he’s dead. In our basement. It looks like he…”

  She looked down at him. At the pool of vomit, the weird look on his face, his dark blue lips, the sort of crawled up version of his fingers, and she said, “Honestly, it looks like someone slipped him some poison or something. He’s super, vomitty dead. You should probably come down here, Em.” This time Ingrid’s voice was fully serious. “I think this might be bad.”

  She hung up with her friend, texted Hazel, and then opened the door for the ambulance guys and the other policeman. They’d arrived quickly, but she imagine they didn’t mess around when their boss called in a dead body.

  3

  Thursday Morning, 2:30AM

  Emily’s heart pounded in her chest as she hung up her cell phone and slipped it back into her robe pocket. Ingrid’s phone call woke her from a dead sleep, except she was on the roof instead of the couch where she’d fallen asleep. And she wasn’t actually asleep. She’d been painting her fingernails. Sleep painting? Whatever. She tried to wipe the bleariness out of her eyes and then pushed the button that would call the elevator. She took the newly renovated elevator down to the shop level, made her way through the iron gates that separated the public area from the apartments, and shakily approached the door that would let her into the book shop. The glossy paint on her nails was still wet, and as she reached for the doorknob, she wondered if she were losing her mind. How had she gotten to the roof? And why was she there in the middle of the night? The old, brass knob squeaked as it turned and announced her presence to Ingrid and her sheriff, who stood on the other side of the door.

  “Em! Are you okay?” Ingrid crossed the room and hugged Emily. “I was so scared. I saw him, and I thought you might be hurt. Gabe needs you to ID dickhead’s body. Which is stupid because I am perfectly able, but he says it should be you. Are you okay?”

  Emily forced her shaking hands to steady as she gently closed the door behind her. She totally had morning breath and crazy bed head, her unruly curls sticking up in seventy directions. And wet nails. She patted down her hair. And felt the paint on her nails smudge. Damn.

  “Of course, I’ll be fine. I hate that guy. Where is he?”

  Ingrid hugged her tighter and whispered into her ear. “It’s okay if you’re all wonky. You were married to him.” The words were soft and unnecessary. Emily already knew that Ingrid would accept whatever Emily needed. It was why they were the best of friends.

  Ingrid’s sheriff spoke up then. “Downstairs, Emily. If you will follow me?”

  He asked politely, but she knew it wasn’t really a question.

  Gabe walked in front of her, Ingrid behind, and the sheriff led them down the creaky stairs of their own shop to the dark basement. Emily sighed, thinking about all the work that still needed to be done down there. She noticed the way Gabe’s boots squeaked with every step.

  Huh. She had a random thought about time slowing and how strange it was to notice irrelevant details when there was a body in her basement. Owen’s body.

  Gabe reached the bottom of the stairs and turned to offer a hand to her.

  “It’s just this way, in the corner.” She could hear the regret in his voice. “I’m sorry to ask you to do this.”

  Emily whispered, “It’s okay.” Even though it wasn’t.

  Emily gulped in a large breath as Gabe stepped aside, revealing the body of her not-yet-ex-husband. She felt detached, almost like she was submerged in quicksand and time was slowing, as she noticed details about his now-dead body. He was a
bit pale, and there was some kind of white, frothy vomit around his mouth, and his lips were a creepy dark shade of blue, but otherwise he looked like he was sleeping. He looked better dead than alive. That was something.

  Gabe was speaking somewhere in the distance, and she could hear him but didn’t understand what he was asking.

  “Emily?” Ingrid’s hand rested on Emily’s shoulder, and her best friend’s words penetrated her foggy thoughts.

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” She forced herself to look up from the body and to focus on the face of the officer. “What did you say?”

  His voice was gentle for the harsh words that came next.

  “Emily, is this your husband, Owen Brown?”

  This. Owen was no longer a he—he was a thing. He’d been a thing in her head for a while now, but this was different. And he was different as an object. Her head felt woozy as she answered. “Yes, officer. This is Owen Brown. My husband. If you insist on calling him that.”

  Suddenly, her throat felt very dry and she didn’t feel like she could get enough oxygen into her lungs. She began gasping for air and looking between Owen and her old, high school crush who would now have to investigate her husband’s murder. This was embarrassing. Or surreal. The room started to spin, and she tried to get a grip on herself.

  “Ingrid? I need to get out of here. Out of this basement. Right. Now. Please. Okay? I just need to go.”

  Officer Gabe spoke, looking at Ingrid. “Stay close. But go if you need.”

  She could hear Ingrid’s voice again somewhere nearby, but Emily couldn’t understand any of the words. Emily felt herself being led up the stairs. The dark of the basement was closing in. And it was cold down there. So cold.

  She felt Ingrid’s hand holding hers, towing her up and out of the horrible dank basement.

  •

  Thursday 3:30AM

  “Thanks for letting me ask you questions tonight,” Gabe said. The three of them were in Emily’s apartment, which was decorated in a rustic Craftsman style. It reminded Ingrid of visiting her mom’s home. Comfortable, familiar, and someplace she could be entirely herself.