Something Old, Something Dead

by Misty Simon

  I heard sirens in the distance and kept the gun trained on him the whole time. He tried to rearrange his blond hair, but I told him to give it up. He had more important things to worry about than the dead squirrel he’d been trying to pass off as a pompadour.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  In what seemed to be a new kind of ritual, Bella made breakfast for Ben and me the next morning. For whatever reason, after the last two deaths in town she’d done the same thing. There was a strange comfort about having her, Jared, and Ben in my kitchen. My dad and Martha would be over in a little while, but for right now it was just the four of us, enjoying some truly good ham-and-cheese quiche with fruit and whipped cream.

  “Did you get that women-on-the-prowl thing taken care of?”

  I laughed as Ben described the banner ad he’d put in the paper announcing he was staying with me for the duration, no new naked ladies need apply. He’d threatened to list some names of women who had thrown themselves at him in particularly overt ways, in hopes of getting them off his back. I’d whispered that a properly placed ad like that would garner them all kinds of attention from the single male population in town. Bella and Jared joined in the laughter when Ben was done. The ad would run starting Monday.

  “So how did the whole Horace thing come down? And why was he screaming about your arms when he was hauled away?”

  This was from Bella. I figured Ben and Jared already knew most of the sordid story. Ben had been there directly after me, worried once Mr. Hanks had called about the books. And Jared had been asked to come back from vacation now that I no longer needed him as my lackey. Heh, heh, heh.

  Ben jumped in before I could swallow my bite of food. “We were on the right trail, and everything fell into place once he tried to shoot Ivy. Turns out old Horace had been skimming from the band to get all the things he wanted in life for him and for Doris.”

  I finished swallowing. “But Doris, for all the Dragon Lady she is, really didn’t know what was going on.” As mean as this sounded, I truly had loved the look of astonishment on her face when she found out that there really was no money of their own and she was poor.

  “The police aren’t sure what kind of charges they’re going to book him on. The autopsy confirmed Nathaniel had actually died of a heart attack and not the gunshot to his shoulder,” Jared added.

  Yeah, that had been a little bump in my road to happiness. But I wasn’t involved anymore, and Horace’s name was ruined forever, so I was pretty much content. “I still can’t believe he tried to bean me with the gun he’d used to shoot Nathaniel. He must have been going off the deep end and had run out of ideas.”

  “You’re partially right, Ivy,” Jared said. “He was getting frantic all on his own. But I guess Doris gave him some kind of bill for an all-day spa, and that’s what sent him completely over the edge.”

  “But she got her spa day free,” I said, baffled. I was going to pay for that through the ear for a while to come, according to Bella.

  Sitting up straight in her chair, Bella sputtered, “I should have been paid, if she got paid.”

  “I don’t think Doris was as naïve as we thought. She also had been courting some brand-new guy to start turning the money over to, and he played the violin. She was concerned Horace wouldn’t be able to function properly because he wasn’t back on his feet yet. She wanted Horace to hand over that little black book you gave to Mr. Hanks.” Jared smiled at Bella and squeezed her cheek—under the table.

  “Oh, well, um.” Bella blushing and stuttering was one for the books, but I still had questions. “What was the little book?”

  Ben smiled at me. “One was exactly what we thought, a diary with smarmy songs. But the other was his own bank account for the money he’d been skimming off the contracts they had for singing at weddings.”

  How were they so popular, when they sucked?

  Ben answered the question I hadn’t voiced outside my head. “They usually had a better repertoire than for Martha’s shindig. He said they were trying out some new material that night.”

  “Good word.”

  “Thanks, babe. Anyway, he’d taken over the banking and was only putting about half into the group account. Nathaniel had asked to talk to him at the Barn before Martha’s wedding, and that’s when Horace shot him.”

  I cut back in. “He admitted to shooting at my car, too. Lauren was awesome when she identified him as the man she’d seen in the woods right after her crying jag. Basically, his whole world went to shit in one day.” Ha, ha, ha. And not a mannequin leg in sight. Inside joke.

  Not one to be left out, Bella brought her info from the grapevine into the mix. “I heard the main members who are left are going to start a string quartet and rename themselves The Survivors.”

  “Nice.” I rose from the table and went to the sink to finally scrub the Sharpie marks off my arm. I shoved my sleeve up, then cranked the knob for the hot water. I would almost hate to see all those lovely words swirl down the drain once I started taking the sponge to my arm. I wouldn’t have been able to do it all without the help of the mysterious caller, who had ended up being Horace’s proposed upgrade from Doris. Apparently, he had felt he could play the field as long as he gave Doris what she needed and kept a low profile. But the lovely Alaina Smathers had wanted more for herself than a thieving bastard. So she’d called me, then called the police yesterday evening after I’d star-69’d her from my phone, asking her to fill in some of the missing details for them. Seems Horace wasn’t the only one with a little ledger action going on. At least her diary was more interesting than his original songs.

  I grabbed the sponge with a smug smile and prepared to wash that man right off of my arm. But a horn blared from out at the street, interrupting my scrub-a-dub-dub. Who could it possibly be? My dad and Martha weren’t due for another half hour.

  A huge RV was parked out in front of my house. I gaped at the monstrosity before turning to the two people walking up the icy sidewalk. No, I hadn’t gotten out there with the blow dryer. But neither had I had time to go after the ice with a shovel.

  My dad and Martha took mincing steps up to the house and stood on the stoop in full tourist regalia. Dad even had a camera around his neck and a fanny pack around his waist. Martha looked into my laughing eyes and shrugged.

  “Good work again, Ivy,” Dad said, giving me his best smile. Until he saw my arm where my sleeve was still pushed up. “I taught you better than this, young lady. What if you had given yourself ink poisoning?”

  His words were eerily like Horace’s, but I overrode that icky feeling by saying, “Dad, don’t get bent, okay? It was a Sharpie.” I rolled my eyes.

  “And Sharpies are permanent markers, if you’ll recall.”

  Guess I’d have to wait for that man to slowly fade from my arm. Damn. No amount of scrubbing was going to make this go away. I’d probably be wearing Horace’s name on my forearm until I grew new skin.

  I focused back in on my dad, dismissing thoughts of how I was going to get the ink off me for more important things. Like how I knew from the way he was clasping his hands together that he was anxious to go but had something to say first.

  “Go ahead and spill it, Dad. You won’t be able to leave with a clear conscience until you do.” I leaned back against Ben and waited for the verdict.

  Stan the Tanned stepped forward and kissed me on the forehead. “Take care of yourself and try to stay out of trouble, at least until we get home.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “I didn’t even get to help with this one, and I don’t want to miss the next one because I’m camping along the coast with my woman.”

  I rolled my eyes at his woman and prayed he wouldn’t manage to drive the RV into some ravine while they were on the highway.

  “Go, Dad. I’m not going to get into any more trouble. I promise.”

  Famous last words.

  A word about the author...

  Misty Simon loves a good story and decided one day that she would try her hand at it.
Eventually she got it right. There’s nothing better in the world than making someone laugh, and she hopes everyone at least snickers in the right places when reading her books.

  Visit her at www.mistysimon.com and join her newsletter for news and fun!

  Thank you for purchasing

  this publication of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.