by Elise Sax
Scareplane
book seven of the matchmaker mysteries series
elise sax
Scareplane (Matchmaker Mysteries – Book 7) is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 by Elise Sax
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1976100956
Published in the United States by Elise Sax
Cover design: Elizabeth Mackey
Edited by: Novel Needs and Lynn Mullan
Formatted by: Jesse Kimmel-Freeman
Printed in the United States of America
elisesax.com
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For love and everything that comes with it.
Also by Elise Sax
Five Wishes Series
Going Down
Man Candy
Hot Wired
Just Sacked
Wicked Ride
Five Wishes Series
Three More Wishes Series
Blown Away
Inn & Out
Quick Bang
Three More Wishes Series
Matchmaker Mysteries Series
An Affair to Dismember
Citizen Pain
The Wizards of Saws
Field of Screams
From Fear to Eternity
West Side Gory
Scareplane
It Happened One Fright
Operation Billionaire
How to Marry a Billionaire
How to Marry Another Billionaire
Forever Series
Forever Now
Bounty
Switched
Moving Violations
Also by Elise Sax
Prologue
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
Epilogue
Also by Elise Sax
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Prologue
The doorbell rang while I was changing out of my maid of honor dress into yoga pants and one of Spencer’s sweaters. I had given Spencer a couple of drawers and half of my closet space since he had more or less moved in with me, but I regularly stole his socks, sweaters, sweats, and t-shirts. It was good to peel off the pretty dress and slip into comfortable clothes. As police chief, Spencer was busy with the aftermath of my friend Lucy’s wedding and the flood that had washed away table settings for two hundred, the band’s bassoon and oboe, twenty pairs of shoes, and a mountain of Jordan almonds. The last I heard, he and his police force were directing traffic around the debris on the highway outside of town, and miraculously, no one had been hurt in the natural disaster.
Meanwhile, Lucy was on her way with her new husband to a cruise ship docked in Long Beach, and I was stripping down and ready to binge watch Golden Girls reruns on television.
The doorbell rang again.
My grandmother stuck her head in my bedroom as I slipped on a pair of Spencer’s socks. “Can you get that, dolly?” she asked. “It’s Jean the real estate lady, and she wants to talk to you.” Even though Grandma couldn’t see who was at the door, she had a way of knowing things that couldn’t be known.
“What does she want? I can’t buy property.” My credit score was slightly less than Bernie Madoff. I had to beg my bank to give me a debit card, and I still wasn’t allowed to write checks since an unfortunate event a few years back.
“She wants to talk about somebody buying property for you.”
“What?”
The doorbell rang again, and this time, it was followed by a loud knock on the door. “You better go, bubbeleh,” Grandma said. “Jean’s the most persistent woman I’ve ever known. She could get the dead to rise again if she needed them to sign mortgage papers.”
“I have to sign mortgage papers?” I asked, slightly panicked, but my grandmother didn’t answer. Instead she pointed her finger down the hallway toward the stairs.
I flew down the stairs as the doorbell rang yet again. I opened the front door, and sure enough, Jean the real estate lady was there. She was beautifully dressed in a power suit, and she had a large designer bag slung over her shoulder, which was filled with file folders.
“There you are,” she said, clearly annoyed. “I thought you were dead or something, like maybe you were washed away.”
“I got to higher ground in time,” I explained.
“Good. Come with me.”
She turned around and marched down the driveway. Jean was all business. I heard that real estate literally ran through her veins. She wasn’t good at accepting no for an answer. I closed the door behind me and jogged after her. “What’s happening? Where are we going?” I asked as I followed her.
“Over there, of course,” she said, pointing at the house across the street.
The house across the street had been the scene of two murders, and after a complete renovation months ago, had been left abandoned and allowed to fall into disrepair. The front door was open and swinging in the wind. The front yard was overrun with weeds, and there was a swampy smell around it, probably from the pool in back.
Jean marched across the street and stopped on the sidewalk in front of the unfortunate house.
I put my hands on my hips. I had walked over in Spencer’s socks, and they had taken a beating from the street. Spencer was going to kill me when he saw them. I was debating whether I should throw them away before he saw them or hide them in the back of his drawer and deny any knowledge of what caused their demise.
“What’s going on? Is there a problem with the house? I don’t even know who owns it now.”
“It’s stuck in probate,” Jean explained. “But it’s about to be unstuck. That’s just the tip of this iceberg, Gladie.”
“There’s an iceberg?”
Jean grabbed my left hand and inspected my fingers. “He hasn’t asked you, yet. That’s what I figured.”
“He? Who? What?”
“The cop. The chief.”
“The…” Oh. Wait a second. The world spun around, but I willed myself not to faint. I clutched Jean’s arms, pulled her close, and got in her face. “What have you heard? Spit it out.”
Jean pulled away from me and smoothed out her power suit. A small smile appeared on her face, a sign of her delight at having personal information about me that I was desperate to know.
“Okay,” she started. “Your honey has been looking at the house.”
“Looking? What do you mean? Like he’s been gazing at it while he runs in the mornings?”
“Like he’s been asking around about the probate schedule and possible pricing.”
“But he owns a condo,” I said.
Her smile grew like a Cheshire cat’s. “I know. I sold it to him.”
“The house is so big, five times the size of his condo.”
“I know,” she said. “Why do you think he would need the extra space?”
Not for his baseball card collection, I was assuming.
“Listen,” Jean continued. “This is the biggest house on the street. And it has a pool. So, I need to know if you’re on board, because if you are, I’m going to push this thing all the way. If you’re not, I’ve got other fish to fry. Do you get me?”
Jean turned me to face the house. “This is a family house, Gladie. This is what men buy for their wives. For their families. A big house with a pool and room for a kiddies’ swing-set.”
“A kiddies’ swing-set. For their wives.”
“So, what do you think?”
The house was beautiful. Large and every woman’s dream. But how could I own a house? I had never owned anything, except for my car, and I technically didn’t pay a penny for that. Houses were permanent. Kind of like husbands.
Husbands.
Kiddies’ swing-sets.
Spencer.
I love him, but…
“The house is bad luck,” I told Jean.
She blinked, like I had gone out of focus. “What do you mean?”
“Two people were murdered there.”
“So? What’s your point?” she demanded. “That’s nothing compared to the history of your grandmother’s house. That one’s like the Amityville Horror, but scarier.”
“I don’t think Grandma would live in the Amityville Horror,” I said but wondered if there was some truth to what Jean said. “But this house is definitely bad luck… What’s that sound?”
Jean scowled like a woman who was watching her six-percent take leave for good. “The only thing I hear is my retirement getting further away. Listen, I know houses. This one has good bones. The second you move in, it’ll go up in value by at least thirty percent. You know what kind of investment that is, Gladie?”
I rubbed my ears and wondered if I was getting a cold. They were buzzing something awful. “I don’t know about investments. I worked on Wall Street, but that was only dressed up as a hot dog and handing out fliers for a diner for four days.”
Jean stomped her foot and pointed at the house, again. “Well, take it from me. I have two mill in an index fund, and I can tell you that this house is an investment of a lifetime. It’s not bad luck. There’s no such thing as a bad luck house. It’s good luck. Not bad luck. Good luck. Do you hear me? Good luck. Good luck. Good luck. This house is good luck. What’s that sound?”
“You hear it, too?” I asked.
“It sounds like killer bees on the loose. Killer bees would be bad luck, but I have a great bee guy who can handle them for a reasonable fee.”
The sound got louder. I took a tentative look up, searching the skies above me for bees, but there were none. There was something worse.
“Oh my God,” I said.
“Oh my God,” Jean said.
A small plane was falling from the sky with a trail of black smoke behind it. It was making the loud bee sound, and it was getting louder, as it got closer to crashing on our heads.
“We should run,” I suggested.
“It’s not going to hit us,” Jean said, ever the optimist. Despite her positive attitude, she put her hands over her head, shielding it.
I didn’t think her hands would be enough to protect her from a plane landing on her head. The plane was heading right for us, but it could have veered off at any point, so even if we ran, there was no guarantee we would be safe.
“We’re going to die,” Jean breathed, her optimism flying out the window as the plane got closer.
“We’re not going to die,” I said, patting her back.
“I’m not an idiot Gladie,” she spat at me. “I know that you die when a plane crashes on you.”
“I mean, maybe it won’t hit us. Maybe it’s not crashing. Maybe it’s doing some kind of acrobatic trick, like in an air show, or a movie from the 1920s about airplanes.”
Jean seemed to think about that for a moment. “You think so?”
“Sure,” I said, but I was a big fat liar. The plane was above us and coming down fast. It was definitely crashing, and we were in its path. “Hit the deck!” I shouted and tackled Jean to the ground.
I shut my eyes tight as I covered Jean with my body. I tried to remember a prayer, but all I could think of was the prayer for eating bread, which made me remember that my grandmother had leftover cinnamon buns in the refrigerator. Why hadn’t I eaten the cinnamon buns? Now I was going to get crushed to death, craving cinnamon buns. Damn diets. If I lived, I was never going to diet ever again. Oh, who was I kidding? There was no way I was going to survive.
Then, it happened. The plane crashed. The noise was terrible. Just like a plane crashing into a house. A bad luck house.
As the thought hit me, I knew exactly what had happened. I pushed down on Jean’s head as I struggled to stand. Sure enough, the plane had crashed right into the biggest house on the block. The back half of the house was gone, and now there was only a plane with its tail sticking straight up. But the front half of the house was completely intact. The plane was damaged, but there was no fire and not even a wisp of any more smoke.
“Where’s the fire?” I asked. “Is it going to blow up?”
Jean grabbed hold of my hand and pulled herself up. Her hair was messed up, and she had a bruise on her face, which was probably my fault. “The house,” she said. “It killed the house. The plane went after it like it had it in for it.”
“The house is bad luck,” I said and took a couple steps toward the front door.
Jean pulled me back. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going to see if they’re okay,” I said, pointing at the plane. There was the distant sound of sirens coming our way. Two police cars and an ambulance. I recognized the sounds after all of my experiences with emergency services.
“One of them is okay, but he has a broken leg,” my grandmother called from behind me. She was standing in her driveway, watching me. I gave her the okay signal.
“I can’t believe a plane crashed through the house while I was standing here,” Jean said and gave me a pointed look. “You did this.”
“Excuse me?” I asked, blinking.
“You didn’t want the house, so you cursed it. You cursed the house.”
“I don’t curse houses, Jean. I told you it was bad luck.”
“You cursed it,” she said and crossed herself.
I rolled my eyes. “Jean, you’re Jewish.”
“You can’t be too careful,” she said. “You’re not going to curse me, too, are you?”
The police cars arrived, with Spencer’s unmarked car leading the way. He parked on the street by me and hopped out. “Are you okay?” he asked me and searched my body for damage.
“Jean thinks I’m a witch,” I told him.
“Smart woman,” Spencer said.
“Grandma said there’s a survivor, but he has a broken leg,” I said.
Spencer nodded and ordered the paramedics to save the man, but before they moved toward the house, the front door flew open all the way, and a man popped out.
He was about forty years old with brown hair, and he was wearing khaki shorts and a blue golf shirt. “I’m alive,” he said, leaning against the door frame. “The plane crashed, but I’m alive. I’m alive, right?”
The paramedics rushed to him, and Spencer and the other police ran to the plane to check out the ones who weren’t so lucky.
It turned out that the survivor was Arthur Fox, a caterer from Northern California, who was so thrilled at his luck to survive a plane crash that at that moment, he decided to move to our town. The pilot and the other passenger didn’t make it, though. The coroner later said they died on impact.
The house across the street stayed in probate, and the plane stayed in the house while the authorities tried to figure out who was responsible for what.
“It’s a clusterfuck,” my grandmother explained to me later that evening, as we watched Golden Girls and ate the leftover cinnamon buns. “They won’t figure it out for weeks. We might as well get used to a view of a plane in the middle of that bad luck house.”
“Those poor people,” I said. “You never know when it’s your time.”
My thoughts went to the vacation that Spencer and I were going to take in a few weeks and the plane that we would take to get there. Grandma took my hand in hers on her lap. “Sometimes it’s good not to know,” she said.
CHAPTER 1
There’s all kinds of matches and all kinds of reasons why matches come to us to be matched. Some are lonely. Some are suckers for love. But some just want something new. Something exciting. Just like eating a spicy meal or riding a thrilling roller coaster, people get a kick out of being scared. And new is scary, bubbeleh. New is different. When we’re unhappy, we think that different has to be better. Mashed potatoes and fried chicken may not be spicy, but they’re still delicious, comforting, and familiar. How can you get better than that? But it’s not so bad to be scared a little here and there and try a chipotle burrito for a change, dolly. Sure, you’ll get a nasty case of heartburn, but then you can eat your fried chicken again later, sure in the knowledge that it’s just as good as spicy food and there’s no diarrhea, either. Diarrhea’s scary, but your matches will get it and there’s nothing you can do about it. So, when they want new and scary, give it to them, but I’ll bet dollars to donuts that they’ll be back to mashed potatoes in no time.
Lesson 12, Matchmaking advice from your
Grandma Zelda
Something was terribly wrong. Spencer wasn’t feeling me up, trying to get in a quickie before breakfast like he did every morning.
With my eyes closed, I patted the bed next to me, but it was empty, just lonely sheets with the blanket crumpled in a heap at the foot of the bed. I opened my eyes and sat up. Spencer was putting the finishing touches on his tie in front of the mirror in the corner.
Spencer was a hot metrosexual who wore a suit better than any GQ cover model. With his tie fixed, he slipped his suit jacket on and buttoned it.
“What’s happening?” I asked him. “Did someone die?”
“No, and nobody better die until next week. I don’t want anything to go wrong during the law enforcement conference.”
I rolled my eyes, adjusted my pillow, and scooted my body backward so that I could lean against the headboard. Spencer was the chief of police of our small town of Cannes, California, which was high up in the mountains, east of San Diego. Spencer wasn’t thrilled with his police force on a good day, and now he was hosting a law enforcement conference, and he had been freaking out about it for the past week, sure that the town or his employees would embarrass him.
