Bat Out of Spell

by Amanda M. Lee

  “This is marvelous work.” Dr. Abigail Marley crouched next to the body, a medical bag beside her, and made clucking sounds with her tongue. “Absolutely phenomenal! She’s fifty, but looks thirty. I did a great job.”

  It took everything I had not to roll my eyes – and maybe smack her upside the head – as I watched her toil over the body. “That’s great. I mean … truly spectacular. Do you want to focus on something more important, though? I’m thinking how she died might be a good place to start.”

  Abigail never liked me. In truth, I don’t think she likes anyone but herself. The look she shot me now was straight out of an old Dynasty episode … and I should know because I’ve been binge watching the show after finding old DVDs at a town rummage sale. Hey, when you’re stuck on an island with spotty internet and cable service you take your entertainment where you can get it.

  “Did you say something, Skye?”

  Her dismissive tone set my teeth on edge. “Yes. I said … .”

  Kenna extended a hand to quiet me. Her expression suggested that I would be in line for a whopping case of payback if I didn’t bite my tongue. “I think what Skye is asking is how did this particular woman end up in the bushes?”

  That was only half of what I was asking. “And how did she die,” I added, refusing to cringe when Kenna burned holes into the side of my face with her laser stare of death.

  “I’m more interested in who she is.” Augie was all business as he kneeled and peered closer at the woman’s face. “Is she one of ours?”

  “I think Abigail already answered that for you,” I volunteered. “She said she had great work done. The best. Tremendous. A-number-one. Why else would she be here if it wasn’t for a freshening treatment?”

  I hated that term. Freshening treatment. That’s what the resort bigwigs call it, though, and because tourism is important I’d forced myself to start referring to it in the exact same manner. I was a team player, after all. Oh, who am I kidding? The only team I want to be on is the one expected to gold medal at the Sarcastic Olympics of 2019.

  “I was merely asking a question,” Augie snapped, his temper ratcheting up a notch. I always had a negative effect on his patience. “You shouldn’t even be involved in this conversation. Can someone tell me why she’s here?”

  “Because Skye tripped over her and we need her cooperation to present this story in a positive manner,” Kenna shot back. “Let’s not make things worse than they have to be.”

  “Yeah, Augie.” I made a face behind Kenna’s back, sticking out my tongue and miming a vulgar act. I knew it would infuriate Augie and I was nothing if not consistent when it came to my efforts to irritate. “Let’s not make things worse.”

  “You’re such a pain,” Augie muttered, shaking his head.

  “She’s definitely a pain,” Abigail agreed, her tone clipped. “But she’s not wrong. This woman is a regular. She comes several times a year. Her name is Blair Whitney.”

  Blair Whitney. That sounded about right for a fifty-year-old who looked thirty and had a helmet for hair. Yes, even in death Blair Whitney’s hair-sprayed monstrosity remained completely immovable. Since Kenna’s witchy powers revolved around fire, it was probably best not to stir her temper because then we would find ourselves mired in an incident … and not a good one. Of course, we were already mired in an incident thanks to the body, but if I’d learned anything over my thirteen years in exile on this stupid island it’s that things could always get worse.

  “See. I was right.” I folded my arms across my chest. “Ha.”

  “You’re going to get it later,” Kenna groused under her breath.

  Hmm. It wasn’t even nine yet and I’d already amassed two threats. It was going to be a good day.

  “She probably just tripped or something,” Abigail noted as she dug in her medical bag. “I don’t see any obvious injuries.”

  Was she blind? This is what happens when you live in a place that’s so small that a plastic surgeon at a resort doubles as the medical examiner. I mean … seriously. “What about that big knot on the back of her head?” I challenged. “You know, the one with the blood. It’s right there. I can see it through that helmet doubling as hair.”

  “Knot?” Abigail knit her eyebrows. “I … oh, you’re right.”

  “What was your first clue?”

  Abigail ignored my sarcasm and leaned across the body to study the wound. I wasn’t a forensics expert or anything, but I’d watched enough crime procedurals to know that was a bad idea.

  “You’re screwing with the evidence,” I complained, looking to Kenna for help.

  “I’m the medical examiner. I know how to preserve evidence.”

  “If you knew how to preserve evidence you wouldn’t be pressing your boobs against the victim’s chest and transferring your DNA to the body.”

  Abigail’s expression darkened. “Are you telling me how to do my job?”

  I thought that was rather obvious. “Yes!”

  “Knock it off, Skye.” Kenna gripped my elbow – her perfectly manicured fingernails digging into the soft flesh there – and tugged me away from the scene. “I think you’ve said enough for one day.”

  I was nowhere near done, but if she wanted to talk in private, I was all for it. “Sure. Great. Awesome.”

  Kenna wrinkled her nose. “I hate it when you use that tone.”

  “And I hate it when you mention my tone.”

  “And I hate it when you complain about me mentioning your tone.” Kenna’s pretty face turned dark. “Why must you always make things so difficult?”

  “That’s how I roll.”

  “Whatever.” She exhaled heavily – a calming technique I’m sure she learned from the yoga classes I imagined she attended. Granted, I had no direct knowledge of her participating in the daily yoga classes at the spa, but that’s how I often pictured her. You would think that we’d be the best of friends after surviving the “incident” together, bonding through tragedy and the like, but you’d be wrong. Our relationship was more tenuous. That said, we had each other’s backs in times of tumult because … well … we always managed to find trouble. For example, it helped to have backup when you had to dislodge a demented mermaid from the area beneath the dock because she was gnawing on feet. That really happened. She snagged a few toes before we managed to vanquish her. Some of the locals still believe there was a very picky shark lurking around the shallows, threatening to forever alter their balance in a demented game of This Little Piggy.

  “We need to keep calm.” Kenna was the pragmatic sort. As the head of the tourism board, she kind of had to be. She wasn’t allowed to melt down in public or hide away in bed for a week with nothing but a pet bat and corned beef hash when the mood struck. No, she always had to be “on.” I felt sorry for her.

  “I am calm.” That was mostly true. I was calm-ish. “I still think it’s ridiculous that we have a plastic surgeon who looks like a human Barbie doll acting as our medical examiner.”

  “She is going a little overboard with the plastic surgery of late,” Kenna reluctantly agreed, shaking her head. “She looks kind of frozen, as if she can’t make an expression.”

  Oh, that was putting it diplomatically. “She looks like that crazy woman who had so much plastic surgery she now resembles a cat.”

  “She’s not that bad.”

  “She’s close.”

  “She’s simply … enthusiastic about what she does for a living,” Kenna offered. “I think you’re too hard on her.”

  Translation: Stop making a scene because I need to think about how to spin this. I could read Kenna fairly well and I knew that was her biggest concern. “I promise not to be hard on her. Happy?” I moved to rejoin the small group still crowded around Blair Whitney, but Kenna intercepted me before I could escape. It was almost as if she read my mind and intuited what I had planned. Sadly, that was a possibility. She knew me as well as I knew her. “Oh, come on.”

  “We’re not done talking.” Kenna wa
s firm. “You can’t just take over a crime scene because you want to be in charge.”

  “I think you’re confusing me with you.”

  “I think you’re being a pain because you tripped over a body and it’s stirred you up,” Kenna corrected.

  “I am not stirred up.”

  “You always get stirred up.”

  I was going to stir her up if she wasn’t careful, and then we would have a fire to contend with, too. How would she like that?

  “Now, we need to keep our heads about us.” Kenna adopted a reasonable persona, as if I were the nutty one and she was perfect. That’s always how she is. I hated it. “We have to figure out what happened to this woman and not let the guests panic. If they panic, they’re likely to leave. That means they won’t spend money in town. Do you want that?”

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  Kenna ignored my response. “You need to make sure you don’t play this up too much in your article. You’re here to cover the opening of the new wing. That’s where your focus should be.”

  She had to be kidding. “If you expect me to ignore a dead body, you’re crazier than our medical examiner.”

  “I don’t expect you to ignore it. I simply don’t want you making it the focus.”

  “Yeah, well, we’ll see. I … .” Whatever I was about to say died on my lips when a familiar golf cart – one with a knit purple cozy covering the hood and a matching awning – pulled to a stop about thirty feet away. The man behind the wheel was the last person I wanted to see. “Oh, geez!”

  Kenna followed my gaze, her lips twisting into a dark expression. “We should’ve known he would show up.”

  Yes, we definitely should’ve known that Barnaby Sterling Montgomery, or Buddy to the great unwashed, would show up. He was the mayor, after all. That also made him the chief of police, the senior center president, the water department chief and the guy who mowed the lone median in the center of the downtown area. Okay, he didn’t mow it. His long-suffering wife Mitzi did. She never left his side, although she clearly hated him as much as everybody else because she spent all her time sitting in the passenger seat of his golf cart knitting. Sometimes – and I swear this is true – she loses her ability to cover her real feelings and I can see that she wants to stab her husband with those metal needles she’s always working. I can’t blame her. We all want to stab Buddy.

  Buddy hefted his expansive girth out of the golf cart – I’d heard through the grapevine they had to design a special unit for him because his gut was so big he couldn’t fit in a standard cart. No, seriously. I don’t like weight shaming people – no one but Buddy, really – but he had to weigh six-hundred pounds. I often worried he would roll over in his sleep and crush his tiny wife. Of course, that could be why she carried the knitting needles. Maybe she understood there would come a time when she had to stab him to ensure her survival.

  “Don’t panic, folks.”

  I glanced around. No one was even close to panicking.

  “I’m here to perform my usual magic and fix things. What do we have here?” Buddy clomped closer to Augie and Abigail, his expression unreadable as he studied the body on the ground. He didn’t look surprised, or especially sympathetic, but he was often enigmatic. Er, well, unless there was cake involved. And ribs. And sometimes cornbread. When you combined all three, he was positively effusive.

  “She’s dead,” Abigail announced. “She was struck on the back of the head.”

  “Oh, that’s terrible,” Mitzi tittered. She was so small she almost always seemed invisible next to her husband. She would’ve made a fine spy if the CIA ever decided to take up shop in Eternal Springs. “Did she fall?”

  “We can’t be sure,” Augie replied, straightening to shake Buddy’s hand. Even though Augie wasn’t a real cop he fancied himself a member of law enforcement, sucking up to Buddy whenever he got the chance. “There’s a rock with what looks to be blood on it, but we don’t know if someone used it as a weapon or if Ms. Whitney somehow slipped and hit her head.”

  “I’m sure it has to be the latter,” Buddy said. “We don’t have murders in Eternal Springs. It simply doesn’t happen.”

  While it’s true that our island hamlet is hardly a hotbed of gratuitous killing and gang violence, we do experience the occasional murder. Just two months ago, Chet Landry bludgeoned his wife with a frying pan when she refused to help him capture his runaway goats. No, true story. He was appropriately apologetic afterward, but he still maintains it wouldn’t have happened if she’d helped him catch the goats. He goes on trial in two weeks. I’m thinking he might get off. Those annoying goats are impossible to wrangle without help, and Sheila always was a lazy loon.

  “We can’t know exactly what happened yet,” Abigail cautioned.

  “It was an accident,” Buddy stressed.

  “We don’t know that.”

  “It was an accident,” Buddy persisted, adopting his “I’m the boss” voice. “It couldn’t be anything else. This is Eternal Springs, after all. There’s no reason to commit murder in Eternal Springs.”

  Buddy, always something of a lout, issues edicts and expects everyone to agree with him for no other reason than he’s in charge. It often works … but not with everybody.

  “We don’t know yet,” Abigail shot back, annoyance evident. “I need to get her into my lab and get a better look at her head wound.”

  “So, what are you waiting for? If I were in charge of this scene I would’ve gotten her out of here an hour ago. I would’ve solved things fifty minutes ago. I would’ve also earned an award for my quick thinking and measured response.”

  “I found her only forty minutes ago,” I pointed out.

  “Thank you, Skye.” Buddy shot me a quelling look. “You know what I mean. I get things done. Just last week I received an award from the city for being the best mayor in the history of Eternal Springs. Do you know why I got that award?”

  “I thought you gave it to yourself.”

  Kenna elbowed my stomach to quiet me, but I could see the corners of her lips curving and knew that, for once, she didn’t want me to keep my mouth shut. She’d been thinking the same thing.

  “I did not! The council voted on it.”

  After he’d put it on the agenda … and paid for his own plaque. He’d hung it in the middle of city hall. I hear he’s considering getting special lights to shine on it so it’s impossible for people to miss it. Oh, yeah, that’s the other reason everyone in town hates Buddy with a fiery passion. He’s the world’s biggest braggart and all-around tool. He’s just that annoying.

  “I think we should focus on the dead woman and not Buddy’s well-deserved accolade,” Augie interjected, forcing me to mouth the words “suck up” in his direction. “We need to get her inside so Abigail can conduct a proper exam. Right now we don’t know if it was intentional or an accident.”

  “I guarantee it was an accident,” Buddy said. “Still, I’m not one for telling others how to do their jobs.”

  Oh, right. He never does that. Wait … he always does that.

  “If you need to conduct a proper examination, Abigail, I trust you to do it.” Buddy turned and lumbered toward his golf cart, Mitzi scampering at his heels. “I trust you all to put this away quickly and quietly. I don’t want it dragging out like Chet and that goat thing. Make it go away.”

  “So much for him having faith in my abilities as the medical examiner,” Abigail muttered.

  “Just do your job and report your findings,” Kenna suggested. “There’s nothing else you can do. There’s nothing else any of us can do.”

  That sounded reasonable, but I wasn’t feeling reasonable. There were plenty of things I could do. I simply wouldn’t tell anyone about them.

  Three

  I could have left. I wasn’t an investigator, after all. It wasn’t my job to track down what had happened to Blair Whitney. It was my job to cover her death, though. Well, kind of. No one wanted me to dwell on her death – whether a tragi
c accident or murder – because it might hurt tourism.

  Of course, the needs and wants of others had never informed my decisions. That’s how I ended up in this mess in the first place. The incident that shall not be named. No, seriously. I can’t talk about it. All that’s important is the school burned down and we were stranded here because of our choices that night.

  Yeah. I’ve never been overly fond of consequences.

  I watched Abigail work for twenty minutes, my temper growing with each passing second because I was convinced she was incompetent. Augie scattered his men – the finest group of former mall rent-a-cops ever assembled – in various directions to look for evidence. Then he headed my way.

  “Are you okay?”

  The question caught me off guard. “Compared to what?”

  Augie shrugged, discomfort rolling off his shoulders. They were much broader than I’d remembered from high school. That wasn’t saying much because he was a science nerd back in school – I know that sounds mean, but he’s always irritated me. But he had turned into a relatively handsome man, especially for a guy who would actually take the time to argue with someone over which Death Star design was more flawed.

  “I simply want to see if you’re okay,” Augie explained. “You looked a little pale after … well, after you tripped over the body.”

  What exactly was he trying to say? “Pale?”

  “Look, it’s upsetting.” Augie spread his hands out to offer capitulation. We so often went for each other’s jugulars that very little thought was spared for the initial assault. He seemed to be signifying that he wasn’t in the mood for a fight. That was … odd.

  “I know you pride yourself on being tough and together, but tripping over a dead body would rattle anyone,” he continued. “You don’t have to be embarrassed by it.”

  Embarrassed? “Um, I’m not embarrassed.”

  “You look embarrassed.”