by B. T. Alive
“No worries!” she said, instantly perky again. “I’ve got snacks in my room.”
“I mean that clue,” I said. “We don’t know what it is or what it means, but if he catches us in there again, he’ll quit and Grandma will kill us!”
Tina looked thoughtful. “She wouldn’t actually kill us. I mean, unless he quit during the rush—”
“You’ve really got to learn that shielding thing,” I said.
“I know, I know.”
“Oh crud,” I said. “Like, now. Right now.”
“What?” she said, confused. “Why?”
But then she followed my gaze.
The doors to the dining room had just opened.
To a man I’d hoped to never see again…
Chapter 25
… that twerp in the turtleneck. Bryce.
He’d scanned the room in a nanosecond, honed in on Tina, and tried to fake a surprised wave. Like he hadn’t snuck down here early on purpose to find her.
“Seriously, please at least try to block that guy’s desperate yearn,” I muttered, keeping my voice low. “Last time, you pretty much lost it.”
“I’m not going to fall for that guy! He’s all the way across the room!” she hissed. “I’m not my mom, remember? My empathy’s short range.”
With a jaunty, casual air, Bryce sauntered straight for us.
“I hope you’ve picked a dress for the wedding,” I muttered.
“Would you relax?” she muttered back. “Attraction waves aren’t that big a deal, and I’ve got it pretty much under control.”
“Oh, like last time?”
“Look, we have to talk to this guy, don’t we? Isn’t he a suspect?”
“Sure. Just don’t let him wind up as your fiance.”
“That hasn’t happened in years.”
I arched an eyebrow.
“Hey,” she said. “High school was rough, okay?”
“High school?”
Just then, our clearly unimportant private conversation was superseded by the Arrival of an Interested Male. “Hello, ladies!” Bryce said, trying to deepen his voice and mainly sounding like he had a slight cold.
Tina giggled.
Unbelievable.
“Hi Bryce,” I cut in, giving him a chance to at least pretend to not be hitting on her.
“Did I ever show you my app?” Bryce said, to Tina. He whipped out the phone-tablet-pocket-monitor-thing and started swiping. “Check this out. This thing’s going to kill Tribesy.”
You do know Tribesy, right? It’s this app that’s like if you took the worst parts of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, put them in a blender, and made the whole thing ten times as addictive.
I hate Tribesy. And it’s the first app I install on every new phone.
Bryce sidled up beside Tina and held the screen so they could both see it together, with at least their shoulders touching.
“Oh wow,” Tina cooed. “That looks great, Bryce!” She tapped the screen, and frowned. “Oh… um…” She tapped again. “Is something supposed to happen?”
Bryce chuckled. “Oh, this is just the mockup. An image of how the app will look.”
“Oh! Wow, so you made this? That’s super neat!”
“I’m not a designer,” he sniffed. “I outsourced. With all the iterations, this cost me over forty thousand dollars.”
“For a mockup?” I said. “How much did Nyle give you?”
Bryce’s eyes narrowed, and he glared my way. Beside him, Tina visibly relaxed, flicked him a look of distaste, and edged a step away.
“I don’t know where you’re getting your information,” Bryce said, with stiff condescension, “but although Nyle was initially supportive, he came to prefer other opportunities.”
“Really?” I said. “He passed up your fabulous investment returns on a mockup?”
“It’s not my fault he needed money!” Bryce snapped.
Tina and I both stared.
“Needed?” I said. “For what? Nyle never needed money.”
“How would you know?” Bryce barked. He was flushing now, like he knew he shouldn’t have opened his big venture capital mouth, even to save face in front of Tina. “And why are you so interested, anyway? Who are you?” He turned to Tina, and abruptly he switched to a fatuous leer. “I mean, I know Tina.” He clapped a skinny hand on her shoulder, and Tina’s guarded expression melted to open interest.
“Would you please keep your hands to yourself?” I snapped.
“Seriously?” Bryce said. “What are you, the hall monitor?”
“Summer, please,” Tina said. She was flushed, and looking all conflicted.
“Please what?” I said. “Your new masseuse just confessed the perfect motive to kill.”
“Excuse me?” Bryce demanded.
“Oh, come on. How much did he ‘loan’ you? A hundred thousand? Two hundred?” I eyed him. “Half a million?”
Bryce winced.
“Half a million dollars?” I said. I eyed Tina. “Is that true?”
She scrunched her face. “Um, I’m not sure…”
“Why? You’re not close enough?” I snapped. “What’s he have to do? Kiss you?”
“What are you talking about?” Bryce said.
“Summer!” Tina said. “Stop!”
I groaned. “I should have just brought the parrot.”
“Parrot?” Bryce said.
“Summer!” Tina said.
“We’re fine,” I said, and I zapped Bryce’s nose.
The jolt hurt like hell.
Seriously, the pain bit like a bee sting. “What the… gyah!” I barked, through clenched teeth. I shook my hand, then clamped it under my arm. “What is wrong with this family? Do you all have some recessive gene for Psychic Counterzap?”
It was really, really stupid to say something like that after I’d wiped his memory. True, the “touchee” was usually too dazed at first to notice much, but still. Dumb.
Not that it mattered.
Because Bryce was clutching both hands to his nose… and howling.
That was a first.
After the initial jolt, the people I touched had never seemed to feel a thing. If they had felt any pain, they must have forgotten it as part of the wipe.
But Bryce flopped into a chair and started rocking back and forth with his eyes held shut, moaning, my nose, my nose, my nose…
Maybe I did have a zap.
Tina looked shocked. “What did you do?” she demanded.
“That never happened before!” I snapped. “Come on!”
I made for the door. Tina raced behind me, and Bryce’s moans chased us all the way out to the hall.
“Where are you going?” Tina panted, as we hustled up the stairs.
“Your place,” I panted back. “I wasn’t kidding about getting the parrot.”
“You shouldn’t have said all that,” she said, behind me. Without her face, her voice sounded hurt and sharp.
I hated that. “Trust me,” I said. “He won’t remember a thing.”
“That’s not what I mean!”
“I was trying to get him away from you,” I snapped.
“I can take care of myself!”
I snorted. “You’ve got more boundary issues than a plate of yogurt.”
“All he did was touch my shoulder!”
I stopped, gripping the banister. Tina stumbled past me, then turned back.
We faced each other in the narrow old spiral.
Quiet and low, I said, “He’s some random dude. It’s not okay.”
She crossed her arms. “And what you did? That was okay?”
“I didn’t mean to do that,” I said.
“You didn’t?”
“No! And I promise my hand hurts worse.”
“How do you know?” she said.
“What, did you feel that he felt worse?”
“No, I didn’t,” she said. “That’s not how it works. It’s unpredictable. And confusing. And I just…” Her voic
e caught, but she kept on. “It would just be great if you remembered sometimes that you might not know exactly how it feels to be me.”
We stood in silence.
For once, I shut up.
Finally, I said, “Okay. I’ll try to remember that.”
“Thanks.”
“And if you ever need a human cattle prod…”
Tina snort-laughed, and the air around us seemed to relax. “Look,” she said. “You may have a point about boundaries.”
“Good,” I said. “Now Old Mother Summer won’t have to sit up nights worrying over your wild empath ways.”
She smiled. “And I won’t have to worry about you giving everyone dementia?”
I shrugged. “I only zap if they deserve it.”
“Summer, seriously—”
I started up the stairs again. “Let’s go get that parrot.”
Behind me, Tina sighed.
We retrieved Keegan (and a quick breakfast), then decided it was now late enough in the morning to check in on our possible-future-murder-victim Taylor Pritchett. Tina knew the way to her room, and it was only after we knocked that I realized something important.
“Tina?” I said. “What are we going to say to this kid?”
“Oh, you know…” She scrunched her lips in thought. “Maybe Keegan’ll get something.”
“No way,” Keegan chirped.
Tina eyed me. Then she held Keegan close so he could give her lips a peck. It was weird. (Giving Mr. Charm’s nose a nuzzle is totally different.)
“It would help if you had some confidence,” she said. “He can tell.”
“It would also help if he told us something useful. Ever.”
The door opened, revealing not a dark-haired teen, but a gray-mustachioed older Pritchett. When he saw us, his eyes boggled, and his jaw literally fell open.
“MURDERER!” Keegan squawked.
Chapter 26
“Mr. Pritchett?” Tina asked, with instant solicitude. “Are you all right?”
Why was she worried about him? The parrot had just outed the guy as the Mustache Murderer! I sent Keegan warm thoughts of heartfelt apologies. Then I realized I was attempting mystical contact with a bird. Who had just pooped on Tina’s shoulder.
Meanwhile, the murderer ignored Tina, and he glared at me with open fright. “What are you doing at large?” he wheezed, in a pretentious educated accent like some guy on old-timey radio. “Aren’t you the prime suspect?”
“Me?” I said. “You’re the one who… I mean… oh.”
This guy wasn’t the murderer. He’d thought the word when he saw me.
Stupid parrot.
That was 0 for 2, Keegan. A false-alarm MURDERER and the cryptic, useless GUITAR he’d squawked with Mercedes.
“Two, two, tutu,” Keegan chirped. “Ballerina.”
The man squinted at the parrot, apparently distracted from his immediate concern that I would jump at the chance to off another male Pritchett. “How curious,” he pontificated. “I would never have anticipated that a modern-day killer would affect the trappings of a literary pirate.”
“Pirate?” I said.
“There must be a misunderstanding,” Tina cut in, with a glowing smile. “We’re hotel staff. We’re only here to help, Mr. Pritchett.”
“And the… accoutrement?” he asked, with a nod at Keegan.
“Oh, that’s Keegan,” Tina said brightly. “He’s an old Inn tradition.”
“Ah!” said Fitzgerald, and then his eyes went bright as he finally actually looked at Tina. “Please, call me Fitzgerald.”
Personally, I’d rather have called him a taxi. But he ushered us in… and I tried not to gag.
Although Fitzgerald Pritchett was presentable enough, draped in an old tweed jacket with English professor elbow patches, his room was a disaster. Even the morning light and spacious architecture of the Inn couldn’t atone for the tornado-strewn mess of clothes, bags of chips, boxes of cookies, and bottles of cheap whiskey.
On a lovely couch that had to be Victorian, the two teens slouched, messing with their phones.
They didn’t look up, but somehow, they did perceive us. In unison, they rocked up out of the couch and lumbered toward us, still watching their screens.
Before I could say anything, they stood on either side of the parrot (totally ignoring me and Tina), arched out their phones, and snapped a string of selfies.
Then they sat back down, without a word.
Well. At least they weren’t going to upload a video of Keegan being all telepathic. I hoped.
“These are my children,” announced Fitzgerald, with a ring of paternal pride. “Tyler and Taylor.”
Children, huh? The man had to be in his sixties, at least. I wondered whether this was his second (or third) marriage… and if he had a first wife, how did she feel about his new kids? Murderously jealous, perhaps?
“My wife, alas, could not join us,” he continued. “She remains at home, unwell.”
Tapping her phone, Taylor muttered, “You mean, ‘hung over’.”
The wrinkles in the man’s face contracted with a spasm of shame. Maybe this kid was going to snark her way into an early grave.
“We won’t bother you long,” I said. “We just wanted to check on a few issues to make sure your experience is top notch.”
Tina looked surprised, then granted me a subtle nod of approval.
“We noticed that one of your relatives felt she needed direct contact with the chef,” I said. “Is that unusual?”
If it was, it might narrow the suspects a bit. At least to those who were more intimate with the old matriarch, and could rationally plan on her calling out the chef.
But Fitzgerald was shaking his head. “Alas, no,” he said. “I’m afraid dear Nana puts on rather a display whenever she dines out. She’s been in the habit for at least ten years.”
So much for that. Looked like every Pritchett in the family tree could have planned on her yanking the chef out of the kitchen.
“What about guitars?” Tina said.
Fitzgerald frowned in confusion.
“Any… family traditions?” Tina pressed.
Fitzgerald’s face cleared. “Well… now that you mention it…”
“Yes?”
The older man favored her with a long, bushy wink, then mimed a few chords on an air guitar at his mild paunch. “I used to play a bit myself.”
“Yeah, by yourself,” Taylor muttered.
Grandma must not have met this kid. If she had, she might have been open to letting fate take its course.
Fitzgerald scowled, then cleared his face. “Much as I would love to entertain such a lovely young woman…” he said to Tina, then darted me a quick glance and amended, “… women…”
“It’s fine, dude,” Keegan chirped.
The boy Tyler snorted loud through his nose. But Fitzgerald pressed on, and gestured us both toward the door. “… I should let you resume your duties. We’re really finding the service quite satisfactory…”
“Aside from killing Uncle Nyle,” Tyler muttered.
Somehow the older man was guiding us toward the door without actually touching us. Tina was already out the door.
I stopped walking, flicked the teen girl a glance, then faced her father. “Sir, I don’t want to alarm you, but… is it possible any others in your family might be in danger?”
“Danger?” He frowned. “I don’t know what you mean. The owner assured us that the kitchen—”
“Yes, yes, of course,” I said hastily. “But if you have any… enemies…”
“Nonsense!” he snapped. “Thank you for concern, but no. Good day.” He creaked shut the door…
…until Keegan chirped, “MANSION!”
Fitzgerald froze, and blanched pasty white.
Behind him back on the couch, the boy Tyler piped up, “It’s talking about Nana’s mansion.”
“Obviously,” Taylor said.
“Wow,” Tina said. “You have a family m
ansion?”
“We do,” Fitzgerald said, with a tight smile.
“We don’t,” Taylor called. “The whole dump’s going to Cousin Kitty.”
“Along with Nana’s millions,” Tyler added. “Everything.”
Everything? I thought. This matriarch had a whole reunion’s worth of descendants, and she was planning to give her entire fortune to Kitty?
But Fitzgerald’s high forehead was flaming red, and he erupted in a voice so jagged that I jolted back.
“The Manse is not a dump!” he barked. Flecks of spittle creamed at the corners of his lips. “The Manse has been in the Pritchett family for generations. The architecture alone should make it a national treasure!”
“Psycho,” Keegan chirped.
The teens giggled, and I wanted to throw that parrot out the window.
Yes, the thought had been mine; the man’s sudden passion over an old house struck me as fairly disturbing. Now he was glaring at the parrot with serious venom. I looked to Tina, but her face had gone tight with resistance.
“Ignore him,” I told Fitzgerald, trying to sound light. “Sounds like the Manse would be a great place to raise a family.”
“Yes! Exactly!” he cried. His cheeks were flaming ruddy, almost feverish. “Yet for some perverse reasons of her own, my mother insists on living out her days there all alone. She has never shown the slightest interest in her youngest grandchildren.”
On the couch, the last two scions of the House of Pritchett swiped at their screens.
“Maybe Kitty’s been more… attentive?” I said.
“Attentive?” he roared. “That woman’s not even a real Pritchett! And if you’re suggesting that actual family need to fawn to earn the slightest consideration, well, that didn’t work out so well for Nyle, did it?”
“Oh?” I said, struggling to maintain the pretense that this conversation was remotely normal. “Nyle never struck me as the fawning type.”
“Is that so?” he snapped. I couldn’t tell whether he’d made the connection that I’d actually worked with Nyle or he was just too worked up to question the logic of a random maid having an opinion on Nyle’s character. “Well, you must have missed his remarkable turnaround in the last few months. Suddenly he was devoted. Flying in to the Manse for weekend visits. Entertaining my mother for hours on end.”