Inconvenient Murder: An Inept Witches Mystery

by Amanda A. Allen

  “You don’t think she’ll go facial hair, do you? Or boob hair? ‘Cause that would be the worst.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Ingrid nodded, “that’s a good one. The karma backlash is pretty minor, I bet. That’s a real possibility.”

  “Or we’ll trip for days on end,” Emily added, twisting her lips. “Maybe we should let Gabe do his whole sheriff thing and just find a soap opera to binge watch. They still make those, right?”

  “I only watch Spanish soaps,” Ingrid said. “From the 90s, on YouTube. I don’t want bunnies to die, Em. Think of the bunnies.”

  Gabe snorted as Ingrid wailed the last word but he still hadn’t twisted out of her hug, so she didn’t take his anger too seriously. “So you’re saying that Autumn is going to enact her own justice?”

  Ingrid and Emily nodded at once.

  “Sometimes,” Ingrid said, “you gotta take one for the team, know you’ll get hexed, and just try to get your crap done before it hits.”

  “I am going to solve this crime,” he repeated.

  Ingrid patted his cheek and said, “I know. Want to have sushi tonight?”

  He sighed as he walked back to his car, where he paused and said, “Were you really drinking?”

  “Yup,” Ingrid said. “But I can do the spell for busting my buzz, too. I keep a potion on my keychain for it.”

  “Take it now,” Gabe demanded and watched Ingrid sigh, open a small vial on her keychain and pop a tiny round pink ball into her mouth.

  “Kill joy,” she said as he made her breathe into a breathalyzer. When she came up clear, she said, “I would have taken it regardless. Drinking and driving is almost as douchey as getting murdered in someone’s basement.”

  •

  Wednesday Late Morning

  Ingrid and Emily knocked on the gallery guy’s door carrying a tray of doctored coffees. They debated for long minutes before deciding to dose them all. Ingrid was already looking forward to the post-serum nap.

  “What do you want?” Doug demanded as he opened the door.

  “Here,” Emily said, handing him a coffee and saying, “Can we come in? Maybe we’re here to think about giving you your deposit back.”

  Ingrid eyed her, saw the coffee in her hand, and realized her friend had already had some. With a shrug she took a sip of her own coffee and decided to go ahead and get down to business.

  Emily and Ingrid watched in satisfaction as Doug downed the espresso.

  “You two are nothing but trouble,” Doug said.

  “Yup,” Ingrid and Emily said in unison. “We really are.”

  “And plan to continue to be,” Emily added. “It’s for the best you’re moving since we drive you crazy.”

  “Plus you’re super creepy,” Ingrid added, the truth serum hitting hard.

  “What do you want?” he asked again. He looked at the coffee and then took a drink.

  “Where were you the night of the murder?” Ingrid asked baldly. “We know that you were here that night. Someone saw you. What were you doing?”

  “Reading my daughter’s journal,” he growled.

  His eyes narrowed on them as Emily said, “Ooooh, douchey.”

  “For sure,” Ingrid agreed. “It’s that whole creepy dove vibe he has. So you didn’t kill that dickhead, Owen?” She almost whined the last sentence. She really, really wanted it to be whatever this guy’s name was. He was leaving anyway. It would suck if whoever killed dickhead ended up being someone she liked. Or someone who was cleverer than Gabe.

  “I thought you two did.”

  “I have an alibi,” Ingrid said, “And I would have stabbed him. Probably in the throat. Maybe in the guts. But I definitely would have twisted the knife.” She took another sip of her coffee and truth serum.

  “Yep,” Emily said. “I think I’d have run him down if I were super mad. Or probably pushed him out a window if I could get him high enough. Which wouldn’t have been hard since I’d just have to promise to sleep with him on a random roof. He was a real whore.”

  “He was,” Ingrid said. “You should get your kid checked for diseases. Dickhead was passing some around. Like a lot. He was a real one-man epidemic.”

  “So you were my favorite guess for who killed him,” Emily whined.

  “Since you’re a super creepy dove,” Ingrid added, nodding vigorously. The two of them glanced at each other and made a sad face. “Though I do feel sad for your kid. She’s making bad life choices, that’s for sure. But I’m not sure anyone deserves you. You know?”

  “Oh, hey,” Emily said. “Do you think you could be out by tomorrow? We’ll refund your deposit if you go away.”

  “You two are horrible, evil witches who will burn. Just like my ex.”

  “What? Rude.” Ingrid said to Emily.

  “I’m sorry your wife left and whatever,” Emily said. “But that’s not the fault of all witches everywhere. Besides we’re barely witches.”

  “That’s a fact,” Ingrid said, yawning and tapping her fingers against the door jam.

  “Every witch I know is evil and horrible. Just like my wife. Leaving poor Mary behind at the mercy of her grandparents. I have to work every minute to counter their influence on her and get her the things she needs.”

  “What?” Ingrid asked, glancing at Emily to see if she was confused, too.

  “Her grandparents keep trying to get custody of Mary because I’m not her biological father. Like I don’t love and care for her just as if I was.”

  “Damn it,” Emily said to Ingrid. “What is it about these two that keeps me feeling sorry for them?”

  “I don’t know,” Ingrid sighed. “Fine, you can have your deposit back. I have to leave before they make me want to help people with anything other than my checkbook. I don’t have the energy for this. “Gabe is coming over, and I’ve got to get my nap in, order the sushi, and convince Henry to deliver it.”

  “You probably shouldn’t have taken the truth serum since you have a date.” Emily said to Ingrid before turning back to the gallery artist, “I’m sorry your life sucks, dude. It’ll get better. Maybe someone will kill your in-laws.”

  “One can hope,” he said as Emily followed Ingrid from the apartment.

  Ingrid stopped, conscious and mischief striking at once as she told him, “Hey, we dosed you with truth serum. It’ll wear off in like 4-5 hours. You probably shouldn’t call your mom or anyone you hate. Or even speak for a while.”

  “You did what?” he shouted, but they didn’t pause as his shouting took on a blue streak.

  They looked at the elevator, and then Ingrid grabbed Emily’s hand and made her climb the stairs instead.

  “We’re both getting fat. My pants are tight, and I can see a bit of a muffin top there,” Ingrid said when Emily sighed.

  “You’re an evil wench,” she replied before she added, “I’d stop with the rest of that coffee. I think we might have overdosed ourselves since we used the whole vial. I’m feeling very confessiony.”

  “Man, me too. I think you’re pretty and I freaking love you, my favorite dove. I’m kind of tearing up over here. You stop it.”

  “Stop what?” Emily asked, smacking Ingrid as she said. “Fine. I love you back. I’m going to call the hot fireman and see if he wants to play truth or dare.”

  Ingrid grinned a wicked, wicked smile and said, “I’m going to tell Gabe how hot he is. I figure if we just make out until the potion wears off, I’ll be good.”

  “It’s a plan,” Emily said as she headed up to her apartment.

  Gallery guy yelled up the stairwell.

  “Whores! Witches! You’re going to hell! You’ll burn! I can’t believe you put a spell on me. You’ll regret this.”

  Ingrid laughed and saluted, telling Emily as they headed towards her level, “I’m feeling less sad now that gallery guy is a jerk again.” Ingrid’s new goal since she couldn’t get up in time for tai chi was to take the stairs. On Emily’s level though, Ingrid veered toward the elevator. Taking the stairs was r
eally a lot of work. Maybe she would just always take the stairs on the way down.

  •

  Wednesday Early Afternoon

  Emily tried to nap on her couch, but images of Owen screwing every girl with a pulse plagued her thoughts. He was so disgusting. How could she have ever been attracted to him? Finally, she got up and stomped to Ingrid’s apartment. If she couldn’t nap, neither could Ingrid. Gabe wouldn’t be there until lunch, and if Emily knew Ingrid, she was all snuggled into her bed having called for sushi already but refusing to stop napping for a shower. It wasn’t fair. Dang it.

  She walked in without knocking and went right into Ingrid’s bedroom. “Wake up! I can’t sleep. Keep me company.”

  “Dove,” Ingrid whined before saying, “Fine. But I’m not getting up. Get comfy in the chaise. I’m staying under the covers.”

  Emily sat on the chaise lounge under the window and snuggled under a throw blanket. “So I was thinking. We know there are a ton of people that had a good reason to kill Owen. We know the gallery guy didn’t do it because of the truth serum.”

  Ingrid nodded, her eyes closed again, saying sleepily, “I object to using his name. I insist we call him dickhead.”

  Emily continued without acknowledging Ingrid. “And I believe Mary, gallery guy’s daughter. She’s slutty, but I don’t think she is a murderer.”

  Ingrid snorted, her eyes still closed. “Plus we serumed her. Teenage girls are so gullible and idiotic. I get irritating your dad, but man…don’t sleep with dickhead. Choose the hot football player or swim team guy.”

  Emily nodded, not that Ingrid could see since she still hadn’t opened her eyes all the way. “Now that we know that Melinda got her chlamydia-slash-genital-warts-slash-syphilis from Owen, it is super suspicious that she isn’t coming around. I think she killed him, Ingrid. He gave her a disease, and she was definitely irritated that this was going to mess with her open-marriage-sex-with-everyone-plan. I bet you Davis told her to stay away. He is a lawyer after all. He’d help her get out of a murder charge. Because I bet if I killed him, it would seriously mess with Davis’s getting any inheritance from Owen. If there is any. I bet there’s life insurance or something like that.”

  Ingrid sat up, eyes finally open wide. “Yes! I like it! Melinda killed dickhead. Yes! You are right. Awesome!”

  Emily stood and paced back and forth at the foot of Ingrid’s bed. “But where is she? We need to locate Melinda and make her tell.” She chewed her lip and paced some more, before pulling her cell phone out of her back pocket. “I’m gonna text her. But I don’t want to seem suspicious, considering I’ve been ignoring her texts for days now. What should I say?”

  “Just ask her how her test went. That’s a legit reason to check on her… Probably don’t call her a skanky hooker.”

  “Even though she is,” Emily said before sending the text to Melinda. She paced the end of Ingrid’s bed while she waited for a response. After five full minutes of nothing, Emily threw her phone at Ingrid, who immediately chucked it back.

  Emily made a face before picking up the phone off the floor and saying, “I’m just gonna call her.”

  She punched in Melinda’s number and waited for the phone to ring. It went to voice mail immediately.

  “Voice mail.”

  “Directly? How many rings?”

  “Like a half a ring, maybe.”

  Ingrid was on her feet now. “Her phone is turned off or she’s blocked you. Let’s go get a locator spell from Hazel. She has cookies, probably, and we need to find Melinda. We’ll find her and torture her with images of dead bunnies if she won’t confess.”

  Ingrid paused. “Oh, wait. A little later. I still have to make out with Gabe and have sushi. Raincheck for the torture for later. You’re gonna have to get your mean girl pants on ‘cause I’m gonna be all soft and mushy. Now, get out, damn it! I gotta shower and like…brush my teeth.”

  14

  Wednesday Late Afternoon

  Aunt Hazel arrived with the magic necklace that contained the locator spell Emily had asked for to track Melinda. Ingrid and Emily were lounging at Ingrid’s airy apartment with its light gray walls and comfortable couches and the touches of idiotic, expensive things she bought to torture her step-children.

  Aunt Hazel shook her head as she handed Ingrid the necklace that held the spell.

  “You two are the most inept witches I have ever seen.”

  “What do you mean?” Ingrid asked, flipping her dark hair back. She dragged the necklace across the table and then asked, “So…how does it work? Why didn’t you bring cookies?”

  Aunt Hazel rolled her eyes before she snatched it from Ingrid. “I would have said it was idiot proof, but obviously not. You two—” She huffed and then took a swig of wine. “Say her name, clearly, and the necklace will pull you in her direction. Just follow the tugging. Considering it’s you two, wrap it around your wrist first to get a good grip. If you lose sight of it, you won’t get it back.”

  “Will it just fly to her,” Emily asked, taking the pentagram-shaped necklace, “if we don’t?”

  “Yes, obviously.” Aunt Hazel said. She smacked the back of both of their heads. “For payment, I’m going to make you write basic spells over and over again.”

  “Man,” Ingrid said as she picked up her keys and slipped on her heels. They were black, open-toed and fantastic. “My mom did that when I was in high school. I never could get the fire spell out of my head. That’s probably why I sometimes set my sheets on fire when I’m sleeping.”

  “Or your fingers on fire when you’re making a point,” Emily added, helpfully. “Or the forest on fire, even though it’s damp, during the full moon event-thingy-mabob. Or…”

  “Yes,” Ingrid interjected, sticking out her tongue at Emily. “Hazel gets the picture.”

  Aunt Hazel closed her eyes and began breathing slowing in and out through her nose.

  “I think you’re giving her an aneurism,” Emily said. “I’m going to slap Melinda so hard her ears will ring for the rest of her life. I’m good on karma if I don’t use magic for it right, Aunt Hazel?”

  “Karma,” Aunt Hazel said slowly, “does not apply only to magic. It applies to all of your actions—magic or no magic.”

  “Is your eye twitching?” Ingrid asked, topping Hazel’s glass of wine. “There’s cheesecake or something for that. But no cookies.”

  The two friends looked at each other, and then Emily asked, “So that’s a no then to the karma deal? I think it might be worth it all the same. She slept with my husband and pretended to be my friend, so I’m pretty sure she owes me a few. I bet we’ll balance out. Come to think of it, so did Autumn. I wonder who else in this town falls into that category.”

  “Every single female who has the vaguest essence of whore to her,” Ingrid answered.

  Hazel put her hands on her face and then looked up, saying seriously, “You’d think I’d be used to you two. And that is not how karma works.”

  “Feels like it should work that way,” Ingrid input. She swung her purse over her head and said to Emily, “You should get that little flashlight they gave us at the resort in Belize. We might be out after dark, and I sure don’t know how to cast a light spell. And snacks. You should get snacks.”

  Emily nodded and grabbed her coat, slipping on her flip flops. They were beaded red and black and she thought they set off her goth toenails with pizazz.

  “Wrap it around your wrist, Em,” Ingrid said as she checked for her keys. “Hey, Aunt Hazel, there’s cheesecake in the fridge. I didn’t make it, so you should try it. And also cold-pressed coffee. It’s one of my better efforts. Oh, and left over sushi. So, after we track down Melinda and bitchslap her to Tuesday,” Ingrid told Emily as they left the apartment. “I think we should consider going to get a massage. I pulled a muscle thinking about climbing the stairs this morning. And there was the making out with Gabe which took a lot of effort. So also a soak.”

  “Totally,” Emily agreed. They to
ok the elevator to the ground floor and got into Ingrid’s car. Ingrid turned it on, changed the station and then said, “Do we say anything other than her name? How mad will your aunt be if we call her to ask?”

  “Let’s just try,” Emily said. “Melinda Brown.”

  She wasn’t holding tightly to the chain, so it pinged against the window, scratching down it as it tried to escape.

  “Grab it,” Ingrid yelped, ducking even though it was on the other side of the Escalade.

  Emily caught it and the two friends stared at the deep scratch in the window before sighing in unison. Ingrid turned the SUV around and set it toward the cliffs on the edge of the island.

  “You think she’s camping?” Ingrid asked as she turned up the music. “I feel like we should be listening to some hard rock as we track down this jezebel-murderer, whore, and such. If she killed dickhead, she did us a favor. But she could have dumped the body somewhere else, you know? I could have gotten dickhead’s death vomit on my shoes.”

  “Ew,” Emily said, “I didn’t think of that. What if I got it on me when I was blacked out? I don’t wear shoes to bed. I would have been barefoot.”

  Ingrid gagged a few times and eyed Emily’s feet askance before she said in relief, “Hey wait, we set your feet on fire. They’re probably okay now.”

  They drove down the curving island roads before Ingrid said, “It’s possible my oversized SUV was a poor choice.”

  “It’s too big. But if there’s a zombie apocalypse, we would be able to live out of it on the run. But since we’re on an island, it needs to turn into a boat.”

  “I was thinking about getting something else,” Ingrid said, looking over at the scratched window. “Maybe a Volkswagen Beetle? Those are cute.”

  “Those are high school cute. I don’t think so. Maybe… I don’t know, maybe something else little. But this one is pretty new. You could, dare I say it, drive it for longer than a couple of weeks.”

  “I’m sorry, Emily, but you’re talking the kind of nonsense that Gabe would. I’m going to need you to go back to being a flake. I don’t need college-graduate Emily.”