Witch at Heart: A Jinx Hamilton Witch Mystery Book 1 (The Jinx Hamilton Mysteries)

by Juliette Harper

  That’s Aunt Fiona for you. A regular ectoplasmic, tree-hugging liberal.

  Before I could ask Beau any more questions, Tori came hurrying up. “Jinx,” she said urgently, “you have to come over here and meet someone.”

  Leave it to Tori to work the undead room.

  I followed her over to a lonely grave in the far corner of the cemetery. She pointed at the flat granite stone. The words etched in the stone were, “Jane Doe, Died in Briar Hollow, 1995. Known Only to God.”

  When I looked at Tori questioningly, she gave me the same look she flashed at me the day she showed up with Winston and Xavier when they were kittens. “Jinksy, meet Janie,” she said, stepping aside to reveal a gossamer thin wisp of an entity with enormous sad eyes. “Janie, meet Jinksy.”

  Dear God. First it was homeless skunks and now Tori was moving up to forlorn ghosts.

  “Hi, Janie,” I said. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “Jane isn’t my name,” the ghost said softly, her voice little more than a shy whisper.

  It was easy to see why Tori, Saver of the Strays, latched onto this one. If I had to guess, Jane was no more than 18 years old when she died. Her long hair hung down around her shoulders, and judging from the tones of her now gray and white color palette, I was guessing she’d been a brunette.

  “What would you like us to call you?” I asked.

  The girl’s voice broke when she answered. “I don’t know my name,” she said, the words coming out in kind of a low moan. “I don’t know anything about myself except someone killed me. Then I woke up here and I can never leave.”

  From beside me, Colonel Longworth’s sonorous voice said gently, “Fiona called Jane the hardest of her hard cases.”

  “She doesn’t remember how she died?” I asked.

  “Worse,” the Colonel said, “she cannot name the shiftless brigand who murdered her.”

  8

  Yep. That’s right. The Universe must have thought Jinx and the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day she was having needed a little sprinkle of twenty-year-old murder for flavor.

  Colonel Longworth explained that, in Aunt Fiona’s opinion, the reason Jane could not move beyond this earth might be because she didn’t know her name and her killer had never been brought to justice.

  “Did Aunt Fiona try to solve the murder?” I asked. The Colonel and I had once again stepped away, leaving Tori to talk to Jane since our conversation was obviously upsetting the fragile spirit.

  “Yes,” he said, “but never with any degree of success.”

  “What do you know about how she died?”

  “Only that she was felled by a single blow to the head on a local trail in the year nineteen hundred and ninety-five,” he said.

  I looked around at the ghosts wandering the cemetery. “Why do all of the rest of you seem so . . . well-adjusted?” I asked.

  “We know who we are,” Beau answered, “or rather we know who we were. We can speak with one another of our families and of the lives we lived. We have learned things as each new spirit has joined our number. Jane is a blank slate. She remembers nothing of her life and she has no idea who she might have been.”

  So, there is a hell. And we were looking at it. Damn.

  Tori walked up just as the Colonel finished speaking. I saw what she said next coming a mile off.

  “Jinx, we have to fix this. We can’t leave her here like this.”

  Glancing at my watch, I said, “Tori, I’ve had this whole ‘powers’ thing exactly 18 hours. How do you think I . . . we . . . are going to fix this exactly?”

  “I don’t know,” she said stubbornly, “but we have to do something.”

  Beau was beaming at Tori again. I swear I think he was getting sweet on her. “I like your spirit, young lady,” he declared. “You are a true daughter of the South.”

  Since it was getting on toward one in the morning, I suggested that me and Miss Scarlett best get back to the plantation. Beau walked us to the gate.

  “If I come here during the day, can I see you all?” I asked him.

  “Not all of us,” he said. “It would seem we grow more . . . experienced the longer we are on this side. I can appear during daylight hours.”

  “Where are you when you’re not visible?” Tori asked.

  The question seemed to briefly confuse the old soldier. “I am always in the same place,” he finally said.

  Well, okay then. That cleared that right up. Not.

  Regaining his composure, Beau said, “Just call out to me in the vicinity of my resting place and I will hear you.” He pointed to a tall, white marble obelisk. “That is my marker.”

  Not exactly like a guy giving you his number on a cocktail napkin, but close enough.

  “Thank you, Colonel Longworth,” I said.

  “Beau,” he corrected me again. He reached for my hand, which I held up in approximately the right location. Gallant gentleman that he was, Longworth approximated taking my hand and kissing it. I didn’t feel his lips, but a cool breeze passed over my skin.

  The instant Tori and I stepped through the gate, the cemetery reverted to its dark and deserted status.

  “That,” Tori declared, “was a total trip.”

  It was a short drive back to the shop where we were greeted by four indignant cats who did not appreciate being left alone until the wee hours of the morning. We changed into our pajamas and then settled on opposite ends of the couch with super-sized glasses of red wine and a big bowl of popcorn between us. We’re very Olivia Pope that way.

  (If you don’t watch Scandal, you should. Binge watch. Seriously.)

  “So now what?” I said.

  “You’re asking me?” Tori replied. “Can’t you make a 911 call to Fiona?”

  “I’ve tried,” I grimaced. “I think she’s sending me straight to voicemail. Okay. So.” I scanned my brain, “what would Buffy do?”

  “Ask Giles,” Tori said. “Duh.”

  In the absence of a smart British guy, we went the next best route. We Googled.

  Colonel Longworth had the basic details down. Jane’s body was found lying beside a hiking trail about five miles outside the city limits. The coroner estimated she was 18-years-old, but neither the body nor the tattered backpack lying nearby offered up any clues about her identity.

  She had been killed by a single blow to the head, but her body was in an advanced state of decomposition and. . . well . . . animals . . . enough said. A sketch artist rendered a likeness based on measurements from the skull, and he got danged close; the image on the screen of my laptop easily matched the features of the young ghost we’d just met.

  News outlets all over the country ran the picture, but no one recognized Jane, and she didn’t fit anyone on the missing person reports either. After several months, the people of Briar Hollow asked for permission to bury the body in the local cemetery. The town took up a collection to pay for the funeral, and from what we could tell, the whole community attended. That made me choke up a little. Jane might have been buried without her name, but she was mourned, even if it was by strangers only.

  “Aunt Fiona must have gone to the service,” I said. “She was probably already talking to Jane’s ghost all the time the investigation was going on.”

  “Do you remember hearing anything about this when it happened?” Tori asked, reaching for a big handful of popcorn.

  “No. But you know our moms. They never wanted us to know about anything bad going on in the world, and we were just nine when Jane was found. They probably thought it would freak us out too much.”

  Tori munched thoughtfully, washing the popcorn down with more wine. “This could explain why they’d never agree to let us hike that part of the Appalachian Trail the way we wanted to.”

  “We’d just have wound up starving to death in an abandoned school bus like that guy in the movie,” I snorted. “Neither one of us was outdoorsy enough to be hiking anywhere.”

  “We were just kids,” Tori laughed. “We ha
d big ideas.” Then she grew quiet, and added softly, “Just like Janie. She can’t even remember what her dreams were, Jinksy. That’s just not right. And what about her people? They don’t even know where she’s buried.”

  Tori was preaching to the choir. I had already made up my mind that we had to try to help Jane’s ghost, but I still had no idea how we were going to manage that. At that moment, however, the combined effects of a long day, too much excitement, three glasses of wine, and a ton of popcorn were catching up with me. I let out a yawn so strong, I swear the easy chair on the other side of the room scooted forward a little bit.

  “Yeah, me too,” Tori said, immediately yawning as well, because after all, yawns are contagious.

  I managed to stumble to bed. Tori sacked out on the couch with the cats under one of Aunt Fiona’s crocheted afghans.

  The cats let us sleep, so it was almost 9 o’clock when the smell of brewing coffee caused Tori to blearily raise her head off the pillow. “Morning,” she mumbled. “Did you remember to get me my half-and-half?”

  “Good morning to you, too,” I answered from the kitchen. “And yes, your congealed dairy sludge is waiting for you.”

  I heard her get up and pad to the bathroom. When she appeared in the kitchen and stumbled over to one of the chairs at the table, I couldn’t keep from laughing at her case of bedhead. The woman looked like she could tune in Radio Free Mars without the benefit of a tinfoil cap.

  With a cup of coffee in each hand, I joined her and watched as Tori added sugar and half-and-half to her coffee. Talk about a magical transformation. Half a cup later, she was a different woman.

  “Well,” I said, “there you are.”

  She grinned. “Just needed a little caffeinated jumpstart. So, what’s the plan?”

  “The same as it was yesterday,” I said. “We get downstairs and get to work.”

  “But what about Jane?” Tori protested. “We have to figure out who killed her.”

  Right. Solve a 20-year-old murder by noon. Piece of cake.

  “In case you’ve forgotten, a handsome man has offered to bring us lunch today.”

  Tori’s eyes brightened. “Oh! That’s right!”

  “This would be the same handsome man who was Aunt Fiona’s friend,” I pointed out. “If she had an interest in Jane’s unsolved murder, Chase would know about it.”

  “Good thinking,” Tori admitted, “but how are you going to work Jane into the conversation? Just casually mention we went for a walk in the cemetery at midnight and ran into her?”

  “I’m one ahead of you on that one, too,” I said. “Get dressed and come downstairs with me.”

  We took turns in the tiny bathroom and made ourselves a little more presentable than we normally would on a Saturday that involved taking inventory, but hey, see previous reference regarding ‘handsome man.’

  An hour later we were standing downstairs in the middle of the shop. I hadn’t bothered to flip on the light. Dust-filled shafts of sunshine from the big front windows illuminated the space. I cleared my throat. “Good morning . . . shop,” I said.

  Beside me, Tori snickered and I gave her “the look.” She quieted down and arranged her features in a more serious expression.

  I started again. “I was wondering if you could help me with something. Do you have anything about the girl who was killed outside of town on the hiking trail in 1995?”

  My question was answered by what sounded like a series of gears revolving. Then a little “ding” went off, and the drawer on one of the display cases slid open. Tori and I both peered inside and saw a single manila folder. Extracting it, I flipped it open and found piles of newspaper clippings all covering the discovery of the body and the subsequent investigation, along with articles written periodically through the years on the anniversary of the community service.

  “There you go,” I said, “one conversation starter with Chase McGregor.”

  “This is just so freaking cool!” Tori said. She looked around. “Shop, you’re awesome!” Then she thought for a minute and said, “Do you have a name?”

  My laughter died in my throat when the blackboard by the front door spun around on its nail a few times before coming to a stop. “Call me Myrtle,” was written in perfect block letters in the center of the board.

  Myrtle The Magical Shop?

  “Now you’re just messing with us,” I said in an accusatory voice.

  I kid you not, the store giggled.

  9

  “So how come I can see and hear all this stuff?” Tori asked, dragging a box of Christmas elf ornaments off a shelf and starting to count them.

  “I guess the metaphysical management figures you’re with me,” I said, making an entry on our running list for ‘brass spittoons - four.’

  Tori finished her count and said, “Thirteen elves and one misplaced green garden gnome.”

  Adding them to the list, I asked, “Are you okay with all this?”

  “Are you kidding me?” Tori said, opening the stepladder. “This is freaking fantastically awesome, Jinksy! Ghosts and witch powers and Myrtle. This is way better than winning the lottery and buying mom a new doublewide.”

  That cracked me up. We had a long-running joke about the bizarrely predictable acquisitions of lottery winners. A new doublewide for mom was always in the top three, along with dually trucks, and trashy women (or worthless handsome men as the case might be.)

  After Myrtle produced the folder of newspaper clippings, we spent some time looking through the material without really finding out any new information. I was no longer panicked about my inventory since the store itself was willing to help out, but I did want to tidy things up and make it look like we’d been hard at work when Chase got there at noon.

  Tori was full of good ideas for the shop and her organizing influence was already making itself felt. The antique display case just inside the front door was slowly emerging as a center for essential oils and herbal products, and from time to time Tori would stop to run a Google search. I had already called a local soap maker about sampling her wares with an eye toward carrying her all natural, vegan products.

  About 10 minutes after noon, Chase tapped on the glass in the front door. As I went to let him in, Tori, talking like a bad ventriloquist, said, “Exactly why have I never met this man before today?”

  Responding in kind through my smile, I said, “He’s only been running the leather shop 3 or 4 years and it’s been at least that long since you’ve come over here with me to visit.”

  “You didn’t tell me I was missing a hunk of that quality,” she mumbled. “You only talked about his cat.”

  I only talked about Festus because, as far as I was concerned, a guy like Chase McGregor was so far out of my league it wasn’t worth getting my hopes up. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not a mud fence in the looks department. Mom keeps telling me it won’t last, but so far, I can eat whatever I want to without gaining serious weight. I take after her side of the family, which means my features are kinda roundish, but with a good jaw line and a nice nose. My hair is dark like hers, but in the sun the highlights are red without my having to pay anybody to put them there. I’ve always thought I’m okay, but not anything to write home about.

  Now, Tori is a little looker. She has blue eyes that dance with good humor all the time and she is currently wearing her strawberry blonde hair in a cute, spikey little pixie cut tinged in magenta on the ends. I’m about 5’8” and she’s struggling to make 5’, but she compensates with pure personality and enthusiasm for life. She’s always the one getting some bright idea like we need to go zip lining and I’m the one asking when the company ran their last safety check on the harnesses. I’ll get on the dang zip line, but I need to see the paperwork in triplicate first.

  So I was a little bit more than surprised when Chase smiled warmly at Tori when I introduced them and then turned his full attention back to me. “How are you getting settled in?” he asked.

  I felt myself going a little
warm under the full attention of his eyes and told myself it was just the afternoon sun heating up the shop. “Oh,” I said, “you know how it goes. The cats are happy, therefore, I am happy.”

  Chase laughed and said, in the tone of commiseration all cat lovers use with one another, “Do I ever. I built a little set of stairs so Festus can get on the bed and he wouldn’t use them until I switched out the rubber tread for carpet. He gave me that whole ‘good help is so hard to find’ look.”

  He built his lame cat a set of stairs to get on the bed? Oh. My. God. I could very possibly be staring at the perfect man.

  From beside me, Tori, who was fully tuned in to the little undercurrent of subtext that seemed to be developing between me and Chase, said, “How’d Festus come up lame?”

  “He was born with a deformed hip,” Chase said. “Nobody would adopt him at the shelter and they were going to put him down. I couldn’t let that happen. Trust me, when he gets the zoomies at 3 o’clock in the morning, he does just fine on three legs.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Festus gets the zoomies?” I asked incredulously. “Why does he always limp so bad and meow to be picked up when I see him?”

  Chase flashed me a grin. “He’s a cat,” he said. “A little man cat. He knows how to work the angles.”

  We all laughed at that and Tori telegraphed me a look out of the corner of her eye that in our silent BFF speak meant, “He’s a keeper. Go for it.”

  God love my girl, she doesn’t have a jealous bone in her body. It would never enter her mind to shift into competition mode because a guy was showing some interest in me.

  “I don’t mean to sound rude or anything,” she said to Chase, “but I heard you were going to come bearing pizzas.”

  “I come bearing the menu from the pizzeria,” Chase replied, taking a folded piece of paper out of the pocket of his jeans. “I didn’t want to run the risk of showing up with anything you all wouldn’t like.”