Inconvenient Murder: An Inept Witches Mystery

by Amanda A. Allen

  Ingrid glanced over and said, “Do I want anything that delivers? Maybe I want schwarma. Oh, yeah, I should put sage on my grocery list. In case I ever cook or get Gabe to cook for me. But I think that the sugar scrub is just like sugar and oil and like fancy smelly stuff.” Ingrid typed into her phone before making a face to look up and say, “All I can think to put on my grocery list is more coffee and wine. I guess I could get steaks, but then I’d have to cook them.”

  “Can we just agree to never cook again?” Emily asked. Without asking Ingrid what she wanted, Emily called in a massive order to the Chinese place and then convinced them to deliver the food.

  The two looked at each other when Emily set her phone down with an irritated sigh.

  Emily growled. “Melinda is driving me insane with her ‘let’s bond’ texts. No, I don’t want to have dinner, Melinda. And no, I don’t want to come stay with you for a weekend. She slept with my husband. Does she think we are going to get our nails done? If anything, I’ll pull all her fingernails out one by one.”

  Ingrid put her own phone down and was laying on the floor with her legs over her head. “My back hurts. I blame everyone else ever. Especially that cold dove Melinda. Her too-frequent texts are making my back hurt.”

  “Yeah, she insists we meet in person. Whatever. So, speaking of herbs,” Emily said, changing the subject. “Sheriff Hotpants was totally asking me about some. I had to tell him that I had no idea what any of them were. Though I did tell him that you might know some, so I guess he’ll probably come by at some point.”

  “I can identify as many as five herbs. Sage,” Ingrid said, nodding at Emily before adding, “obviously. Bay leaf—because it’s the one that’s always a whole leaf. I think it’s always a whole leaf. If it’s crushed up, I won’t be able to tell what it is. Don’t you throw it out after you use it? I bet that’s why it’s whole. ‘Cause how else are you going to fish it out?”

  “I have no idea,” Emily said. “What about cookie dough?”

  Ingrid shrugged and picked up her phone to add it to the list. “Also, I know bella donna because I considered poisoning Harrison’s kids with it. Especially Daniella as she’s an evil dove. Instead, I tortured her with nonsensical purchases. Those brats are the reason I have that,” she pointed to a huge, enamel peacock.

  “That’s terrible.” Emily began pilfering through the case again and rejected a bottle of nail polish after bottle of nail polish, making a pile on the floor next to the chaise lounge

  “Rude!” Ingrid made a face and added, “It was, by the way, $5700.00. What was dickhead poisoned with anyway? If it’s bella donna, I might be in trouble since I have some in the container next to the flour.”

  Emily choked as Ingrid added, “I left the receipt out for the peacock for like four weeks before Harrison’s brat, Daniella, finally had a tantrum over it. That was one of the times she was trying to pretend to be nice. All that trouble of buying that piece of crap and then leaving it out, and she couldn’t be counted on to have a whine fest. By the time she did, I was fond of it. I had named it Pierre.”

  “Paint my toes,” Emily ordered. She tossed Ingrid a bottle of polish and scooted across the floor while Ingrid tapped her lips.

  “Oh, yeah, I can identify cilantro, but only if it’s fresh because yummy.”

  “For your next nonsensical purchase, I would like to have a yellow Lamborghini. Or possibly a yellow D’lorian.” Emily lay on the floor and examined her finger nails.

  Ingrid unscrewed the bottle of black polish, raising a brow at Emily.

  “It’s for prison,” Emily told her. “I’m going to be all hardcore with black nails when I go. Maybe I’ll get a temporary tattoo on my face and pierce my eyebrow. That won’t scar, right?” She peered into a pocket mirror as Ingrid began painting her toes.

  “Probably it will scar, but I bet Aunt Hazel could make it go away. I can’t remember any other herbs. Why are we talking about herbs again?”

  “Owen was poisoned, idiot.”

  “Oh, yeah, what a dick. His death has been a real inconvenience so far. But I have to wonder, you guys are still married, right? So do you get all his money?”

  Emily considered for a while and then said, “No. We talked about this with Gabe.”

  “I shouldn’t have to remember everything,” Ingrid said as she pulled Emily’s foot into her lap and began painting the toenails black.

  “He probably doesn’t have any. He was more of a spend-money-he-doesn’t-have type so that he looks all fake-rich when really he’s barely making his credit card payments. He’s probably just going to have debts and be a giant pain while I have to tell people dickhead died and they’re not getting any money. Man, I’ll probably have to pay for his funeral.”

  “We’ll just dump him in the ocean. You take the head, I’ll take the feet. Afterwards we’ll have a yacht picnic and get thoroughly drunk on mimosas. It’ll be a morning funeral. Though, I’m considering not getting drunk anymore as vomiting is gross and bad for your teeth.”

  The door bell rang, and Ingrid paid for the food. As soon as the delivery person left, it was as if he hadn’t even been there. They opened the food as they continued to make the funeral plans that supposedly Davis and Melinda would be taking care of. It was cathartic to plan it out, though.

  “You don’t have to drink until you puke every time. Should we spring for some trash bags to wrap him in?”

  “I’ll spring for a cement block to hold him down, and that’s it.” Ingrid said. “Maybe we should have Bloody Marys, too. Do you think that you have to have a license for burial at sea? Is this one of those ‘ask for forgiveness rather than permission’ times?”

  “I think we’d better just ask for forgiveness,” Emily said. “You think I should go black on my fingers, too?”

  “If you’re going to be hardcore, yes. And then maybe scruff them up. Also, if we’re giving up cooking, I’m also giving up cleaning,” Ingrid added, stretching out her toes. “Maybe I’ll go hardcore with you. But I worry.”

  “About what?” Emily asked.

  “About my muscles atrophying. Will I eventually need assistance to go to the bathroom if I stop cooking and cleaning entirely? Will I turn into a chunky dove? I don’t really plan on doing much work in the bookshop either. We should really hire someone to do all the hard stuff. Or anything that doesn’t seem fun at the time. Isn’t that what happened to Aunt Danna?”

  Emily considered for a moment before she said, “I think that was arthritis.”

  “Weird,” Ingrid answered. “We should call Hazel, by the way, and ask her about help with those herbs and, you know, who else was capable of killing dickhead that way. If I were going to kill him, I would have knifed him. Probably in the throat.”

  “I think I would’ve run him down in my yellow D’lorian.”

  “I’m feeling more visceral than that.” Ingrid stood when there was a knock on the door and crossed to it. As she opened one of the front doors to her apartment, she added, “Maybe a knife in the gut. I could have taken a kitchen knife right to dickhead’s guts and then twisted it around some. Man, I hated him.”

  She smiled up at the sheriff, giving him a wink as she said, “You already knew I hated him, right? Like I would have killed him, bought a dog, and then fed him to the dogs to get rid of the body. That’s not a surprise, is it? In your little black book of notes on the crime, you’ve got me down under the would have killed him but has an alibi section, right?”

  She didn’t wait for an answer. She turned to Emily and said, “Oh, yeah, you have to leave. I’m having dinner with my sheriff.”

  “We just ate,” Emily said as she gathered her stuff. She took the nail polish and said, “I’ll be taking this.”

  Emily saluted the sheriff with her wet nails then held her hand out. “Keys, please?” Gabe tossed them to her and she hobbled out of the apartment, cotton balls still between her toes.

  “I’m starving,” Gabe said as he came in. “And I think your mu
rder plans are both disturbing and will lead you directly to a guilty sentence since you’ll be caught with a half digested corpse.”

  “There’s Chinese food,” Ingrid answered as she handed him a half-eaten container of General Tso’s Shrimp. “Or herbs. I have herbs, sugar scrub, wine, and chocolate. Now I remember why I was making a grocery list. But I couldn’t decide what to make, and then I remembered I don’t like cooking.”

  “Can you even cook?” Gabe looked at the lukewarm food, shrugged and took a bite. “You don’t strike me as a person who cooks.”

  “I’ll have you know that I make a mean cup of coffee.”

  “I know that,” Gabe said, switching to the container of lo mien. “Most people don’t live off of coffee.”

  “And,” Ingrid said triumphantly, “I hear I make an excellent Hungarian mushroom soup and baked Alaska. When I make you mine forever or possibly make you mine until I get bored of you, you’ll have to cook for us, since I have decided to give up cooking and cleaning. I think I’ll hire a maid though. It’s not very sexy to find your boyfriend with a toilet scrubber. ”

  Gabe’s head cocked as he listened to her speak. He looked tired, she thought. She bet he thought he’d spend his days as sheriff strutting around the island, harassing teenage tourists, and making the shopkeepers lusty. She’d prefer to be the only shopkeeper he made hot and bothered. But it served him right to have to solve an occasional crime.

  “You heard you make good Hungarian mushroom soup?”

  “I don’t like mushrooms.”

  At her reply, he started to laugh. It was warm and deep, and it made her all achy and lonely. She watched him laugh at her until it grew into a great belly laugh. That was when she crossed to his chair, took away his food, sat on his lap, and licked the side of his mouth.

  “Um,” he said.

  She didn’t wait for a yes or a no. She kissed him full on the mouth, wrapping her arms around his neck, leaning into him, and biting at his lower lip. It took only a moment for his hands to grab hold of her, clutching her close almost as if he’d keep her from escaping him.

  She laughed at him before going back for seconds. She’d always preferred kisses to dessert, so she wasn’t too sure how her baked Alaska had ever turned out either.

  After long minutes and when her lungs were burning from the wantonness and the lack of breathing, she pulled back and looked up at Gabe through her lashes.

  “So,” she said. “You’re going to find the real killer, so I don’t have to run to Europe with Emily right? ‘Cause I gotta say, I’m going to want to follow this to the end.”

  She ran her fingers up his chest as someone knocked on the door. Legs twining around hers, she yelled for Emily to come in.

  Except it was creepy gallery guy. Man, she should learn his name. Maybe. He was moving. Why bother?

  “This seems to be a conflict of interest,” he said.

  Gabe rose and said quietly, “Ingrid has an alibi.” He approached the door aggressively. “And you don’t need to be up here. I understand you have been giving your landlords a hard time?”

  “How solid is her alibi then?” Gallery guy didn’t seem to notice how Gabe was blocking further entrance to the apartment.

  “It’s me.” Gabe said, “and the entire load on a ferry boat, and cameras on the ferry. And the cameras as you come off the ferry. And the witnesses and affidavit statements of people on the ferry that I have filed away already, so no, this isn’t a conflict of interest.”

  Ingrid crossed to Gabe and shook her head at him. Though she appreciated the gesture, she hardly needed him to protect her from this creepster.

  “I got this, my manly dove. You’re late for something, aren’t you?

  Gabe raised his eyebrows in question, looking between Ingrid and Gallery Guy. Ingrid responded with her own raised eyebrows.

  Gabe kissed Ingrid on the forehead as he said, “Right. I have to get to my next appointment.”

  “I’d wrap you up food,” Ingrid said, “Except I don’t have wrap. Or containers. Or…”

  “Turns out I’m not as hungry for food as I was when I got here.” His gaze traveled warily over Gallery Guy then the good sheriff shrugged his shoulders and retreated down the hall towards the elevator.

  She rolled her eyes at him to let him know how cheesy his statement was before turning to the creepster and demanding, “What do you want?”

  “I want my deposit back.”

  “You can have it back after you get out of the apartment.”

  “I need it now.”

  “Look, creepy guy, you need to leave and not come back.”

  “I told you,” he said, pushing closer.

  “No.” Ingrid cut him off. Fury flowed through her, and she shoved her hand against his chest, pushing him out of the apartment and into the elevator and pulled the gate down. Gabe was still in the hall, spying on her from around the corner, so he got to watch her shove the creepster out with her magic and shove Gallery Guy into the elevator, and send him down to his own floor. Then she flipped the switch that prevented anyone from coming up without ringing her or Emily and raised a brow at Gabe again.

  “You stayed.” It wasn’t a question, but a challenge.

  “That was oddly sexy,” he said, ignoring her snark.

  She blew him a kiss and shut the door in his face.

  With a sigh for the sheriff, she grabbed a thick towel and a cup of coffee. She was going to test out her sugar scrub in a long hot bath and then figure a way to bring things to an end with this investigation before she ended up insane from wanting the sheriff.

  10

  Monday Morning

  Emily tapped her black manicured nails on the steering wheel while she idled at the curb, waiting for Ingrid to come out. She scanned the building, and there was no sign of her. She’s probably making out with her sheriff. They weren’t in a hurry, so she decided to let Ingrid have her fun. She got cranky if she went too long in between kissing. Emily put her car in park and pulled her makeup out of her center console.

  She noticed Davis’s car pass her. She hoped he would stop so she could yell at him for not showing up for interview, but he didn’t stop. He slowed and turned the corner.

  “Apparently dickheadedness runs in the family,” Emily muttered under her breath.

  Her phone buzzed with a text. She picked it up and saw another text from Melinda.

  “Please. I need to see you. I want to tell you everything.”

  Emily shoved her phone into her makeup bag, then slammed it inside the center console.

  “That looked violent,” Ingrid said when she climbed in.

  “More irritating texts from our favorite needy whore. Now she’s begging.”

  “What’s her deal?”

  “Who knows? She wants to talk. To tell me everything. Whatever that means. But she is annoying even via text. It’s like she is trying to become BFFs. I want every part of my life with Owen behind me. This isn’t the time to play sisters and bond. I’m not bonding with a needy whore.”

  “Besides,” Ingrid said idly, “that role is taken.”

  “Damn straight,” Emily replied. She blotted on her concealer and had one eye done. She changed the subject. If she heard Owen’s name one more time, she would throw up, and that would cause her eye makeup to run, and she didn’t want to have to do her makeup twice in one day. Once was torture enough.

  “How was your make-out session, Ingrid? Did Gabe stay?”

  Her friend snorted. “Too short. No, and you ready to see the aunts?”

  “Yeah, just a second. I need to do my other eye.”

  “Oh, wait.” Ingrid reached across the front seat and touched Emily’s arm. “Remember you are supposed to be using your magic. Why don’t you see if you can use it to put on your eyeliner?”

  “Ha. Yeah, right. I’m not gonna practice my magic anywhere near my eye. And before you volunteer, you aren’t getting anywhere near my eye either, with your tendency to set things ablaze with y
our magic. I like my eyes, thank you very much.”

  Ingrid laughed as Emily finished with her mascara the old-fashioned way. “Speaking of annoying texts, heard any more out of creepy gallery guy?”

  Her makeup done, Emily deposited her makeup bag back in the center console and slammed it shut as she answered Ingrid. “He just keeps demanding his deposit back. I told him to take a swim in the strait.” She flipped her mirrored visor up and pulled out into traffic.

  Ingrid laughed and brought the conversation back to her sheriff.

  “So, which herbs did Gabe take?”

  “I’m not sure. The one he asked to take was right next to witch hazel. I couldn’t pronounce it—some kind of Latin, I think. I think we shipped that out to someone before. Since the name was all irritating, I sort of remember it.”

  When they arrived at the aunts’ house. Hazel was waiting for them on the porch looking classy and sleek with her perfect gray hair cut into a perfect sharp line and her square glasses set so perfectly straight on her nose.

  “I hate how they always read our minds,” Emily said. “How’d they know we were coming? Honestly, I’m getting tired of being out-witched. We are gonna have to step it up. Maybe.”

  “Oh dove, we’re always out-witched. We’re out-witched by children learning their first spells.”

  Autumn was also at the house, leaning against the porch rail, arms folded across her ample and droopy chest, and she shook her red tresses condescendingly at Emily.

  “Man, I hate her,” Ingrid said, as she opened the car door and led the way to the porch. “Why is she here so often?”

  “She wants to be the elder who replaces Danna,” Emily replied.

  Neither Ingrid nor Emily were trying to be subtle, or for that matter quiet, and Autumn’s eyelid twitched before she asked, “So, you finally decided to wise up and ask for help?”