He winked and puffed his chest out as he sat, pulling a pair of earbuds out of his jacket pocket. “I had these in. Music soothes me when I rehearse. Also, I’m nothing if not studious. I like to prepare all my angles and make notes for the cameramen so they feature me at my absolute best.”
I sat down next to him. “Someone was murdered during the time you were perfecting angles, Hugh.”
He gasped. His look of surprise, whether acted or real, was on point. “Who?”
“Mom’s husband Bart.”
Hugh made a sad face. “Poor Dita. No wonder she’s so out of sorts.”
I nodded. Sure. That was definitely the reason. Obviously he, too, was blinded by my mother and her wicked charms. “So can I ask you a couple of questions?”
“Of course, Daughter.”
I had to wonder why he kept giving me a familial label. Maybe he was using it out loud so he could adjust to it, as much as I was using it internally in order to do the same.
“Mom never told you about me?”
He sighed, long and wistful. “Unfortunately, she did not. Alas, our love affair was fleeting—like sands through the hourglass, it came and went. We were never meant to be, you see. Ill-fated from the start.”
“Star-crossed lovers,” I whispered. If I’d ever had fantasies about my parents and how they met and fell in love, this one was high on my list.
“No,” he said with a shake of his head. “It had nothing to do with stars. We met at a rodeo convention in Galveston, Texas. She was a rodeo girl and I was traveling with a production of Oklahoma!
“Hah!” Win barked in my ear. “Bloody fabulous!”
Hugh cocked his slick head, frowning. “Who is that?”
My brow furrowed. “Huh?”
“Who’s the fellow with the British accent?”
My eyebrows rose in surprise. “You can hear him?”
Hugh chuckled a laugh. “You’re delightful! Of course I can, Stevie. I didn’t say so earlier because he was offering sound advice and I didn’t want to frighten you further, but I’m one of the few warlocks in the world who can communicate with the dead.”
No. Way. I’d never met anyone else who communicated with the afterlife. I knew others existed, but we’re rare. With the exception of Baba Yaga, who could communicate with Satan himself, I suppose, this was a first for me.
I must have inherited my powers from Hugh.
“Me too!” I yelped in excitement, until I realized that wasn’t really the case anymore. “I mean, I used to communicate with the dead. Not so much anymore since I lost my powers, though.”
He gasped again, the intake of breath making me jump as he gripped my hands in his larger ones. “You lost your powers?”
“Well, I didn’t really lose them. They were slapped out of me. It’s a long story. I’ll tell you someday when you have extra time on your hands.”
Now his face was grave, exaggeratedly so, but still, grave with concern. I think it was concern, anyway. “Who would do such a thing to my daughter?”
“Again, looong story. But a good one, too. Anyway, introductions are in order, I guess. Win, meet Hugh. Hugh, Crispin Alistair Winterbottom. Or Win, as we call him.”
“A pleasure, sir,” Win said, his warm aura surrounding me the way it always did when he wanted to let me know he was being supportive.
My father (my father!) lifted his square, dimpled chin and nodded regally. “The same. We have much to talk about.”
“Indeed, sir. I’m happy to answer any and all questions. Shall I take my leave so that you might have privacy with your daughter?”
I loved the way Win said privacy. It always cracked me up when he used a short “I”. It was so upper-crust British.
“I have nothing to hide,” Hugh offered amicably. “You’re more than welcome to stay. I’m more interested in hearing how my daughter lost her powers.”
“Like I said, we’d need a lot of time to ride that pony.” I wasn’t ready to rehash just yet. “So, mom…”
He winked, his strong jaw lifting. “Yes. Your mother. She’s quite a handful, isn’t she?”
“You’re not angry with her?” I asked in disbelief. “I mean, she didn’t tell you I existed and probably never would have.”
Was I angry with her? Should I pile that on top of all the other things I was angry with her about?
“No, Daughter. Certainly I was at first. But that passed. Anger is a wasted emotion if there is still treasure to find. Finding out about you was a treasure. I won’t allow anger to interfere with what I hope will be a budding relationship with you. Dita…is Dita. I might have only spent one night with her, but she’s easy enough to figure.”
Then I looked at him pensively. “So one last question. Does this mean you’re going to disassociate yourself with me as well, because I’m not part of the coven anymore? There aren’t many left who are willing to associate with me.”
I prepared myself for the inevitable answer. He was a lot like my mother. She didn’t like messes of any kind. I imagined that trait was something she looked for in a man, too—even if it was only for one night. When the goin’ got tough, Dita got goin’. I wanted to be ready for the rejection.
Though, I couldn’t really blame him. I was a sticky proposition, especially if you were only just meeting me for the first time. Were I Hugh, I’d cut ties and behave as though this had never happened.
“Don’t be absurd,” he responded as though the suggestion was unseemly, his eyes intense and glittering. “You’re my daughter. Now that I know you exist, I’ll never leave you. Well, not unless a big lead movie role presents itself. But then you can come to the set to visit me. I’ll show you all of the Hugh Granite techniques I’ve perfected over the years and you can see your father in action. It will be wonderful!”
Tears stung my eyes. Okay, so sure, he was vain and full of himself, but he was willing to do something my mother hadn’t been—stick around. “How did you find out about me?”
“Ah,” he said forlornly, his lips forming a sad pout. “A spirit came to me. One I lost just recently.”
My curiosity piqued, I asked, “Who?”
“Your great aunt Imelda. Unfortunate broom-cauldron accident,” he murmured, making a sad face that bordered on comical. “She’s part of an afterlife coven called Seventy and Saucy. This is where she met your mother’s aunt Prudence. The moment she realized you were the daughter no one ever told me about, she contacted me. What a shock to find out about you!”
Running my fingers over my eyes, I pinched my temple. “I bet. How long have you known?”
“I only just found out two weeks ago. The moment I was able to leave the set of my last movie, I snapped myself here. I would have left sooner, but contracts and agents, you know. However, now we meet, Daughter.” Hugh’s smile went warm and gentle again as he patted my hand. “So tell me, how is it, if your powers are gone, you can still hear this man? Who is this man, pray tell?”
We had a lot to catch up on. “Another long story I promise to share when you have the time. So do you have a place to stay? Are you staying here in town or do you have to hurry back to being an international star of stage, screen and film?”
“For you, I have all the time in the world. I’m between movies, and I’m staying at a charming inn, which is quite close to your beautiful home and has many cats.”
I fought a yawn. The day was catching up with me, but I didn’t want to lose this connection yet. I wanted to bask in the knowledge that my father, the man I’d wondered about all my life, was here—right in front of me.
“So you’re a warlock who can talk to dead people.”
Hugh grinned and winked. “I am. But we can talk all about this and more tomorrow. Maybe for lunch? Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Now, it’s time for all beautiful daughters to be in bed so they can remain as beautiful when they wake. Walk me to the front door?” He rose, tall and perfect, and held out the crook of his arm to me while everything around him fell away.
&
nbsp; I took it, still in a warm bubble of acceptance—until we passed the parlor, that is. That was when I shuddered.
Bart’s body had been taken to the morgue, the sheet once hanging from the ceiling removed as evidence, the pulley and all the mechanical workings dusted for prints. But from the corner of my eye, I saw something shiny flash under the chest of drawers with the long, skinny legs and made a mental note to check it after Hugh left.
As we stopped at the front door, he drew me into a warm hug, resting his chin on top of my head. “Will you be all right staying here tonight? Such a tragedy, and to have to deal with your mother’s sorrow, too? I can’t even imagine the stress. I’d be happy to stay with you, if you’d like, Daughter.”
But I shook my head. How could I ask him to spend time with the woman who’d never told him he was a father? Surely he’d want answers, and while he deserved them, in all fairness, her husband had just died.
“I’ll be fine. But maybe we could have lunch tomorrow? If I can get away?”
Hugh leaned back in our embrace and ran his fingertip down my nose. “As you wish. For now, I shall take my leave.” Squeezing my arms one last time, he raised his own in the air, snapped his fingers, and was gone in a wisp of emerald green smoke.
Just like that.
I stood there for a minute, still basking in the presence of Hugh, unsure what to do next.
“You’ve had quite a night, Dove. The Bats arrived in all their maddening fluffiness, your father finding you after all these years, and of course, there’s Bart. Hugh was right. You need rest.”
I turned around and headed back to investigate the shiny object I saw under the chest of drawers. “But not before I take one last look in the parlor.”
“Stevie? Is that a good idea? Maybe this one is too personal and we should let the authorities do their job rather than immerse ourselves in Bart’s death.”
I sank to my knees as near the chest as I could get, careful not to disturb the yellow police tape blocking everything off, and leaned forward on my hands until my cheek almost touched the floor.
“You see what I see, International Man of Intrigue?”
Win’s sigh rasped in my ear. “I do.”
“Still wanna leave it alone?” Win loved a good mystery as much as I did.
“Do not touch anything, Stephania Cartwright. Especially after you promised Sardine you’d stay out of this room until they could clear it,” he warned, just as I straightened and reached for the fireplace poker.
“It’s Sandwich, and c’mon, Win,” I grunted as I stretched as far as my arm would allow from behind the barrier of the police tape. “You know me better than that. This isn’t my first murder.” I wiggled the poker beneath the chest until I hit pay dirt.
“We don’t even know if it’s a murder.”
“We do too.” Sweeping the poker under the chest, I continued to swipe at the shiny object until it came into view. “Woot!” I cheered, dropping the poker and sitting back up to get a good look at whatever it was.
“A money clip…” Win muttered.
There was that tingle again. “With the initials BH. For Bart Hathaway?”
“And a piece of paper, not money, mind you, attached to it. Can you read it without touching it?”
“It’s a phone number.” As I read it off to Win to commit to memory, I shoved the money clip back under the chest of drawers to the exact position I’d found it in.
Then I ran to find my phone, yelling to Win to repeat the number.
As he rattled it off, I grabbed my phone from the countertop and punched it in, turning it on speaker.
As the other end answered, a recording began to play. “You have reached the Washington State Penitentiary. Our hours are…”
Chapter 6
I popped an eye open. “Uncle Ding?”
“Yes, Gorgeous?”
“Get out of the top of my nightgown this instant!”
“Aw, c’mon, Uncle Ding! What’d I tell you about leaving Stevie alone? You’re giving bats a bad name. Don’t be a dirty old bat!” Belfry chirped.
Ding pushed his way from the top of my pajamas, poking his head out to gaze at me. “I was just tryin’ to get warm. It’s cold here in this cotton-pickin’ state!”
Belfry crawled up along my arm as Ding exited off my shoulder. “That’s what a blanket’s for, Uncle Ding. Now stay out of Stevie’s boobs and go have some breakfast.”
I watched with grainy eyes as Ding took flight, swooping into the bathroom where I’d left the Bats some fruit last night before crawling into bed beside Whiskey, snuggling up against him and literally passing out.
“How you feelin’, Boss?
“Like I saw my mother for the first time in over a year again, then I met my father, and then someone was murdered at my party.”
“Your what? Dita has a baby daddy?” Bel cried.
I stroked the top of Bel’s tiny head. “Of course she does. I didn’t just hatch.” I think at one point in my life I must’ve thought I had, because my mother had been so tight-lipped about the subject. I’d thought all sorts of thing, but I’d never thought Hugh Granite.
“Well, who knows with your mother? I wouldn’t put it past her to have conjured you up.”
I snickered. “Stop. You don’t think for one second she’d do something like that on purpose, do you? If that’s the case, I’m laying bets I was a spell gone horribly wrong.” Then I chuckled, because I could actually joke about my origins and feel no pangs of stinging regret.
“Morning, Dove! Up and at ’em. Your mother’s in rare form this fine day and I believe your help will be needed.” Win’s warning slipped into my ear in his husky-silky tone.
Last night rushed back to me in a flood of my mother’s expensive perfume and my father’s crazy but sweetly overblown ego.
“Now what?” I groaned, scratching Whiskey’s ears when he set his big head on my thigh for our typical morning snugglefest.
“She’s been on the phone for what seems like hours, calling all sorts of insurance companies and bank officials, only to come up dry.”
Stretching, I asked, “Dry? For what?”
“Money, Stevie. If what I’m hearing is correct, there is no money.”
I bolted upright, almost knocking Bel from the bed. “No money?”
Bel hopped into my lap. “You heard Winterbutt right. Bart had no money.”
Scrubbing my hand over my bleary eyes, I tried to shake the sleepies off. “But he has a villa in Greece, for goddess sake! Who has a villa in Greece if they have no money?”
“It was a lease,” Bel said in a deadpan tone. “Old Bart was leasing it and when they left, he owed five months of back rent. Won’t be long now before they come confiscate that Mercedes he’d been hiding in some storage garage somewhere, either.”
This wasn’t happening. I plucked up Bel and shoved the covers off, swinging my feet over the edge of the bed. “There must be some mistake…”
“The only mistake is Dita’s, thinking Bart was wealthy,” Win said. “She was just about to chew someone else out as I came to wake you.”
My stomach rolled in turmoil. What about all the yacht parties and jet-setting she’d claimed they did before she’d stopped communicating with me? “Okay, okay. Let me grab a shower so I can figure this out. There must be some error. I hope there’s some error.”
Just as I was making my way to the bathroom, Dita flew in the door, her face paler than normal, her lavender nightgown covered by the smallest scrap of a matching bathrobe. “Stephania! Thank goddess you’re awake!”
Brushing my hair from my face, I shot her a look of sympathy. “What’s going on, Mom? How do you feel this morning?”
Her small frame trembled, but not in sorrow—in rage. She held up her cell phone and shook it at me. “It’s that Bart! Oooh, I could kill him!”
“Already taken care of,” I sniped.
The guy wasn’t even cold yet and she was too busy hunting down his money to even care how he�
�d ended up dead? She wasn’t upset he’d died; she was upset he hadn’t made finding his money easy enough for her.
“Don’t you take that moral highroad with me on today of all days, young lady! I will not stand for your self-righteousness!” she cried at me, pacing the length of my bedroom floor, her nightgown floating about her dainty kitten-heel-clad feet.
Dang. I’d done it again. I kept breaking my pact with myself to accept Dita for who she was and love her anyway.
“Mom!” I yelled. When she got like this, there was no calming her. She’d work herself into a state of hysteria if I didn’t rope her in. I motioned to the chair by my fireplace. “Give me the phone and sit down, please.”
With a huffy exhale of breath, she plunked down in the chair and held out the phone. “Maybe you can talk some sense into these people.”
“First, I’m sorry. That was uncalled for. And no. That’s not what I’m going to do. I’m going to take a shower and make you a nice breakfast and we’ll figure out what’s going on. And try to remember, you’re in mourning. You know, for that guy who put a ring on it? The police are going to be watching you very carefully. You don’t need the kind of heat they’ll bring if you keep harassing bank officials. It looks bad. It looks like you were only in it for the money.”
She looked at me in outraged astonishment. “I was!”
“Bloody fantastic!” Win quipped.
But I cringed, annoyed that Win thought this was funny. It wasn’t funny to take advantage of someone—to use them for their money.
“Mother! You can’t say things like that! Do you have any idea how bad this looks for you as it stands? If Bart really doesn’t have any money, the police might come to the conclusion you were angry enough to kill him for lying to you. Pipe down, for Pete’s sake.”
Dita blanched, her skin going even whiter, if that were at all possible. “Me? If I wanted him dead, I’d just snap my fingers, for goddess sake. Why would I bother to string him up like some Christmas lights?”
Had Bart still been hanging by the sheet when my mother found him?
Dewitched (Witchless In Seattle Mysteries Book 3) Page 7
